Guide 4: Navigating the Wikipedia Interface

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Guide 4: Navigating the Wikipedia Interface Editing interfaces Guide 4: There are two different editing interfaces – Navigating wikitext and the visual editor. Each has its advantages and disadvantages and it is easy the Wikipedia to shift between them. Interface New users who are not familiar with coding are likely to find the visual editor easier to use, particularly when adding Wikipedia interfaces can appear citations and references. complicated at first, but don’t worry, you • Wikitext editor will get the hang of it quickly. This is the standard Wikipedia draft page Wikipedia provides a step-by-step tutorial and editing interface. It requires you to and there is a large amount of additional manually insert formatting commands, such material available to guide you through. as the heading hierarchy, formatted lists and tables, using wikitext. This guide provides a condensed overview, with links to further detailed information. • Visual editor Further reading and links This alternative editor interface is a ’visual‘ or : online rich-text editor that allows you to write • Wikipedia: Tutorial an article as it will appear on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial • Wikipedia: Cheatsheet 1. Using wikitext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Cheatsheet Wikitext (also known as wiki markup or • Visual Editor: User Guide wikicode) is the syntax and keywords used https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ to format a page. Help:VisualEditor/User_guide The Wikipedia cheatsheet explains how to • Wikipedia Article Wizard access this, outlines the commands used, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ how these will appear in the final page, and Wikipedia:Article_wizard how to save and edit. You can preview the formatting, citations • Wikipedia: Inline citation/examples and inserted content of your draft article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ by clicking ‘show preview’ at the bottom of Wikipedia:Inline_citation/examples the draft page. • Wikipedia: Referencing for Beginners Refer to Wikipedia: Cheatsheet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ : Help:Referencing_for_beginners • Wikipedia: External Links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wikipedia:External_links • Wikipedia: Editing Policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: Editing_policy wikiD guide #4: Navigating the Wikipedia Interface 1 2. Using visual editing 4. Adding citations The visual editing mode for draft and It is important to properly cite all sourced existing articles is activated as follows: information used to write your article. This helps establish the notability of the 1. Click ‘BETA’ in the top right corner of the page. topic and helps to avoid plagiarism. 3. Tick ‘Visual Editing’ See Guide 2: Selecting a Topic/Subject for a list of: appropriate and relevant sources. 4. Save the changes. Citations are semi-automated in the Visual Once visual editing is activated you can Editing mode. In the Wikitext editing choose to edit using this or wikitext. mode you need to manually cite your • Click on ‘edit’ to use the visual editor. sources and compile a reference list at the end of your article. • Click on ‘edit source’ to use wikitext. Adding citations in Visual editor Refer to Visual Editor: User Guide 1. Highlight the text that you wish to cite and click : the ‘Cite’ button in the toolbar. 2. Select one of the three options for adding Creating a new article citations: ‘Automatic’, ‘Manual’ and ‘Re-use’. • Automatic uses the URL. First-time contributors should consider • Manual provides a list of source formats using the Wikipedia Article Creation – including Website, Book, News, Journal Wizard. This takes you through key and other via Basic form – which prompt concepts, such as notability, sources and you to add the relevant information before plagiarism, and finishes on a page where automatically generating a correctly you can start your article. formatted citation. • Re-use is for citing sources that have already Refer to Wikipedia: Article Creation Wizard : been added to the article – you simply select this from the list of existing references rather 3. Getting started than resubmitting the details. Follow these steps to create an article in 3. To insert a reference list for the citations, the Article Creation Wizard. scroll to the end of your typed text and select ‘References list’ from the ‘Insert’ drop-down list 1. On the ‘Ready for Submission’ page enter your in the toolbar. article title and click the blue ‘create new article draft’ button. This takes you to the ‘Create Draft: Adding citations in wikitext [article name]’ page, where you can enter copy and save the page to create a draft. • To add citations and a reference list in Wikitext Refer to Wikipedia Referencing for Beginners 2. Activate Visual Editing (if you wish to use it) : • For a range of citation types, and how they will using the instructions on the previous page. appear in the published article 3. To return to your draft, click ‘Contributions’ (in Refer to Wikipedia:Inline citation/examples the top right corner of the page). Your draft you : have just created will be at the top of the list. 4. Click on your article and select ‘edit’ in the tool bar. Paste in your text and use the tool bar along the top to add formatting. wikiD guide #4: Navigating the Wikipedia Interface 2 5. Adding external links 8. Adding images In addition to citing information, it is Images are an important complement to useful to add external links within the Wikipedia articles. To add an image to body of your article. your article, you first need to upload it to Wikimedia Commons. Adding external links in visual editor 1. Highlight the text that you wish to turn into a Remember to ensure that you have link and click the link icon on the toolbar. copyright clearance on any image you upload. See Guide 2: Selecting and 2. Select the ‘external link’ tab, paste the URL researching a :topic/subject. address, then click done. Adding images in visual editor Adding external links in wikitext 1. Click the ‘insert’ button on the toolbar and • To add external links in Wikitext select ‘media’ from the drop down list Refer to Wikipedia External links : 2. Search using the title of the saved image 6. Adding Further Reading 3. Select the image and review it's details before clicking 'Use this image' The ‘Further Reading’ list at the end of an article reading allows you to provide links 4. Enter caption details and specify the format of to other websites relevant to the subject, the image in General and Advanced settings that may or may not be included in the 5. Drag the image into position. Clicking the reference list. image brings up the editing options if you wish • For instructions on how to format a ’Further to adjust the caption or format attributes. Reading‘ list, and criteria for suitable material : Refer to Wikipedia: Further reading Adding images in wikitext • To add an image in Wikitext Refer to Wikipedia Picture tutorial : 7. Adding internal links Internal links allow your article to be 9. Adding category links found on, and link to, related Wikipedia pages. It is important to link to as many It is important to link your article to Wikipedia pages as possible to avoid your relevant categories. This allows you to article being disconnected from others. connect your article to wider subject Adding internal links in visual editor groups and provides another route for 1. Highlight the text that you wish to hyperlink. Wikipedia readers to find your article. These lists are also important for 2. Click the ‘link’ icon from the toolbar. From here developing a stronger Wikipedia presence you can search and select relevant Wikipedia for women in architecture and the built pages and content based on the term selected. environment. Adding internal links in wikitext The following list should give you an idea • For instructions on linking to another Wikipedia of relevant categories for WikiD – use this page in wikitext : Refer to Wikipedia Manual to explore other relevant categories for of Style: Linking your region and topic. wikiD guide #4: Navigating the Wikipedia Interface 3 • 20th century German architects 10. Use the WikiD hashtag • Australian architects Please put #wikiD in the edit summary of • American architects any article you write or edit (this is at the bottom of the page). • Women architects • Australian women architects This means your work will register through Wikipedia metrics as part of the • American women architects #wikiD project. This is a condition of our • Queensland architects (& other regions) funding from the Wikimedia Foundation and allows us to understand the flow-on effects of the project and training. It is important to add women to general ‘architect’ categories as well as to ‘women architect’ categories. You can also link to other non-architectural Editing existing pages categories, for example • 19XX births and/or 19XX deaths (add the Wikipedia is an ongoing project and relevant year for your subject) everyone is encourages to edit existing articles, either to resolve ambiguity or to • Academics add to or correct existing articles. • Australian academics (& other regions) 1. Log into your Wikipedia account. • Living people 2. Search for the existing article. • Members of the Order of Australia (& other awards) 3. Select ‘edit’ from the toolbar above the article. • University of Sydney faculty (& other universities) 4. Before making any change, open ‘page history’ to assess previous edits. If this has a lot of • Urban planners discussion between editors, the page may be considered ‘controversial’ – you should be • Designers aware of this before proposing further changes. If you are a new user, a less controversial article might be a better place to start. Adding category links in visual editor 1. Select the icon with three horizontal lines at the 5. If you wish to proceed, edit the article using the far right of the toolbar.
Recommended publications
  • Position Description Addenda
    POSITION DESCRIPTION January 2014 Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director - Addenda The Wikimedia Foundation is a radically transparent organization, and much information can be found at www.wikimediafoundation.org . That said, certain information might be particularly useful to nominators and prospective candidates, including: Announcements pertaining to the Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Search Kicking off the search for our next Executive Director by Former Wikimedia Foundation Board Chair Kat Walsh An announcement from Wikimedia Foundation ED Sue Gardner by Wikimedia Executive Director Sue Gardner Video Interviews on the Wikimedia Community and Foundation and Its History Some of the values and experiences of the Wikimedia Community are best described directly by those who have been intimately involved in the organization’s dramatic expansion. The following interviews are available for viewing though mOppenheim.TV . • 2013 Interview with Former Wikimedia Board Chair Kat Walsh • 2013 Interview with Wikimedia Executive Director Sue Gardner • 2009 Interview with Wikimedia Executive Director Sue Gardner Guiding Principles of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia Community The following article by Sue Gardner, the current Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, has received broad distribution and summarizes some of the core cultural values shared by Wikimedia’s staff, board and community. Topics covered include: • Freedom and open source • Serving every human being • Transparency • Accountability • Stewardship • Shared power • Internationalism • Free speech • Independence More information can be found at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sue_Gardner/Wikimedia_Foundation_Guiding_Principles Wikimedia Policies The Wikimedia Foundation has an extensive list of policies and procedures available online at: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Policies Wikimedia Projects All major projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by users around the world using the MediaWiki software.
    [Show full text]
  • Wikibase Knowledge Graphs for Data Management & Data Science
    Business and Economics Research Data Center https://www.berd-bw.de Baden-Württemberg Wikibase knowledge graphs for data management & data science Dr. Renat Shigapov 23.06.2021 @shigapov @_shigapov DATA Motivation MANAGEMENT 1. people DATA SCIENCE knowledg! 2. processes information linking 3. technology data things KNOWLEDGE GRAPHS 2 DATA Flow MANAGEMENT Definitions DATA Wikidata & Tools SCIENCE Local Wikibase Wikibase Ecosystem Summary KNOWLEDGE GRAPHS 29.10.2012 2030 2021 3 DATA Example: Named Entity Linking SCIENCE https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Entity_Linking_-_Short_Example.png Rule#$as!d problems Machine Learning De!' Learning Learn data science at https://www.kaggle.com 4 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Data_visualization_process_v1.png DATA Example: general MANAGEMENT research data silos data fabric data mesh data space data marketplace data lake data swamp Research data lifecycle https://www.reading.ac.uk/research-services/research-data-management/ 5 https://www.dama.org/cpages/body-of-knowledge about-research-data-management/the-research-data-lifecycle KNOWLEDGE ONTOLOG( + GRAPH = + THINGS https://www.mediawiki.org https://www.wikiba.se ✔ “Things, not strings” by Google, 2012 + ✔ A knowledge graph links things in different datasets https://mariadb.org https://blazegraph.com ✔ A knowledge graph can link people & relational database graph database processes and enhance technologies The main example: “THE KNOWLEDGE GRAPH COOKBOOK RECIPES THAT WORK” by ANDREAS BLUMAUER & HELMUT NAGY, 2020. https://www.wikidata.org
    [Show full text]
  • Wiki-Reliability: a Large Scale Dataset for Content Reliability on Wikipedia
    Wiki-Reliability: A Large Scale Dataset for Content Reliability on Wikipedia KayYen Wong∗ Miriam Redi Diego Saez-Trumper Outreachy Wikimedia Foundation Wikimedia Foundation Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia London, United Kingdom Barcelona, Spain [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT Wikipedia is the largest online encyclopedia, used by algorithms and web users as a central hub of reliable information on the web. The quality and reliability of Wikipedia content is maintained by a community of volunteer editors. Machine learning and information retrieval algorithms could help scale up editors’ manual efforts around Wikipedia content reliability. However, there is a lack of large-scale data to support the development of such research. To fill this gap, in this paper, we propose Wiki-Reliability, the first dataset of English Wikipedia articles annotated with a wide set of content reliability issues. To build this dataset, we rely on Wikipedia “templates”. Tem- plates are tags used by expert Wikipedia editors to indicate con- Figure 1: Example of an English Wikipedia page with several tent issues, such as the presence of “non-neutral point of view” template messages describing reliability issues. or “contradictory articles”, and serve as a strong signal for detect- ing reliability issues in a revision. We select the 10 most popular 1 INTRODUCTION reliability-related templates on Wikipedia, and propose an effective method to label almost 1M samples of Wikipedia article revisions Wikipedia is one the largest and most widely used knowledge as positive or negative with respect to each template. Each posi- repositories in the world. People use Wikipedia for studying, fact tive/negative example in the dataset comes with the full article checking and a wide set of different information needs [11].
    [Show full text]
  • Wikipedia Workshop: Learn How to Edit and Create Pages
    Wikipedia Workshop: Learn how to edit and create pages Part A: Your user account Log in with your user name and password. OR If you don’t have a user account already, click on “Create account” in the top right corner. Once you’re logged in, click on “Beta” and enable the VisualEditor. The VisualEditor is the tool for editing or creating articles. It’s like Microsoft Word: it helps you create headings, bold or italicize characters, add hyperlinks, etc.). It’s also possible to add references with the Visual Editor. Pamela Carson, Web Services Librarian, May 12, 2015 Handout based on “Guide d’aide à la contribution sur Wikipédia” by Benoît Rochon. Part B: Write a sentence or two about yourself Click on your username. This will lead you to your user page. The URL will be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:[your user name] Exercise: Click on “Edit source” and write about yourself, then enter a description of your change in the “Edit summary” box and click “Save page”. Pamela Carson, Web Services Librarian, May 12, 2015 Handout based on “Guide d’aide à la contribution sur Wikipédia” by Benoît Rochon. Part C: Edit an existing article To edit a Wikipedia article, click on the tab “Edit” or “Edit source” (for more advanced users) available at the top of any page. These tabs are also available beside any section title within an article. Editing an entire page Editing just a section Need help? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/Editing Exercise: Go to http://www.statcan.gc.ca/ and find a statistic that interests you.
    [Show full text]
  • Building a Visual Editor for Wikipedia
    Building a Visual Editor for Wikipedia Trevor Parscal and Roan Kattouw Wikimania D.C. 2012 Trevor Parscal Roan Kattouw Rob Moen Lead Designer and Engineer Data Model Engineer User Interface Engineer Wikimedia Wikimedia Wikimedia Inez Korczynski Christian Williams James Forrester Edit Surface Engineer Edit Surface Engineer Product Analyst Wikia Wikia Wikimedia The People Wikimania D.C. 2012 Parsoid Team Gabriel Wicke Subbu Sastry Lead Parser Engineer Parser Engineer Wikimedia Wikimedia The People Wikimania D.C. 2012 The Complexity Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 Active Editors 20k 0 2001 2007 Today Growth Stagnation The Complexity Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 just messing around Testing testing 123... The Complexity Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 The Review Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 Balancing the ecosystem Difficulty Editing Reviewing The Review Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 Balancing the ecosystem Difficulty Editing Reviewing The Review Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 Balancing the ecosystem Difficulty Editing Reviewing The Review Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 Balancing the ecosystem Difficulty Editing Reviewing The Review Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 Wikitext enthusiasts CC-BY-SA-3.0, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Usfa-heston.gif The Expert Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 Exit strategy 100% Preference for Wikitext Capabilities of visual tools 0% The Expert Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 To what extent? CC-BY-SA-3.0, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TriMet_MAX_Green_Line_Train_on_Portland_Transit_Mall.jpg The Expert Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 To what extent? CC-BY-SA-3.0, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TriMet_MAX_Green_Line_Train_on_Portland_Transit_Mall.jpgCC-BY-SA-3.0, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TriMet_1990_Gillig_bus_carrying_bike.jpg The Expert Problem Wikimania D.C.
    [Show full text]
  • Building a Visual Editor for Wikipedia
    Building a Visual Editor for Wikipedia Trevor Parscal and Roan Kattouw Wikimania D.C. 2012 (Introduce yourself) (Introduce yourself) We’d like to talk to you about how we’ve been building a visual editor for Wikipedia Trevor Parscal Roan Kattouw Rob Moen Lead Designer and Engineer Data Model Engineer User Interface Engineer Wikimedia Wikimedia Wikimedia Inez Korczynski Christian Williams James Forrester Edit Surface Engineer Edit Surface Engineer Product Analyst Wikia Wikia Wikimedia The People Wikimania D.C. 2012 We are only 2/6ths of the VisualEditor team Our team includes 2 engineers from Wikia - they also use MediaWiki They also fight crime in their of time Parsoid Team Gabriel Wicke Subbu Sastry Lead Parser Engineer Parser Engineer Wikimedia Wikimedia The People Wikimania D.C. 2012 There’s also two remote people working on a new parser This parser makes what we are doing with the VisualEditor possible The Project Wikimania D.C. 2012 You might recognize this, it’s a Wikipedia article You should edit it! Seems simple enough, just hit the edit button and be on your way... The Complexity Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 Or not... What is all this nonsense you may ask? Well, it’s called Wikitext! Even really smart people who have a lot to contribute to Wikipedia find it confusing The truth is, Wikitext is a lousy IQ test, and it’s holding Wikipedia back, severely Active Editors 20k 0 2001 2007 Today Growth Stagnation The Complexity Problem Wikimania D.C. 2012 The internet has normal people on it now, not just geeks and weirdoes Normal people like simple things, and simple things are growing fast We must make editing Wikipedia easier to use, not just to grow, but even just to stay alive The Complexity Problem Wikimania D.C.
    [Show full text]
  • FOSDEM 2014 Crowdsourced Translation Using Mediawiki.Key
    Crowdsourced translation using MediaWiki Siebrand Mazeland i18n/L10n contractor, Wikimedia Foundation Community Manager, translatewiki.net FOSDEM 2014 | Crowdsourced translation using MediaWiki | February 1, 2014 | Siebrand Mazeland | CC-BY-SA 3.0 Why translate using MediaWiki? Way back in 2004, MediaWiki was already there, and Niklas Laxström had an itch to scratch I.e. it wasn’t given much thought We still don’t regret it Started as a set of patches on MediaWiki core Versioning and tracking included for free Most translators already knew MediaWiki FOSDEM 2014 | Crowdsourced translation using MediaWiki | February 1, 2014 | Siebrand Mazeland | CC-BY-SA 3.0 translatewiki.net Using MediaWiki for localisation translatewiki.net the localisation platform for translation communities, language communities, and free and open source projects Supports online and offline translation for MediaWiki and other software FOSDEM 2014 | Crowdsourced translation using MediaWiki | February 1, 2014 | Siebrand Mazeland | CC-BY-SA 3.0 translatewiki.net Using MediaWiki for localisation FOSDEM 2014 | Crowdsourced translation using MediaWiki | February 1, 2014 | Siebrand Mazeland | CC-BY-SA 3.0 translatewiki.net Using MediaWiki for localisation 6.000 registered translators 25 free and open source projects 48.000 translatable strings 440 active translators per month 55.000 translations per month translators do not handle files FOSDEM 2014 | Crowdsourced translation using MediaWiki | February 1, 2014 | Siebrand Mazeland | CC-BY-SA 3.0 translatewiki.net Supported file
    [Show full text]
  • The History of Mediawiki and the Prospective for the Future
    The history of MediaWiki and the prospective for the future Bern, 2017-02-04 Magnus Manske https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaWiki_talk,_Bern,_2017-02-04,_Magnus_Manske.pdf Overview ● History of MediaWiki, with a focus on Wikimedia ● Usage, extensions and scripts ● Wikidata ● Of course, a few tools Pre-history UseModWiki by Ward Cunningham ● Single file Perl script ● All data stored in file system ● Does not scale well ● No “special pages” beyond Recent Changes ● Default: delete revisions older than two weeks, to save disk space… ● Used for Wikipedia since 2001-01 Phase 2 ● Mea maxima culpa ● Switch on 2002-01-25 ● PHP (for better or worse) ● Using MySQL to store data ● Based on UseModWiki syntax for backwards compatibility Brion Vibber Photo by JayWalsh CC-BY-SA 3.0 Tim Starling Photo by Lane Hartwell Nostalgia Wikipedia screenshot CC-BY-SA 3.0 Phase 3 / MediaWiki ● Massive refactoring/rewrite by Lee Daniel Crocker ● Proper OO, profiling functions ● Known as “Phase 3”, subsequently renamed “MediaWiki” (July 2003) Lee Daniel Crocker Picture by User:Cowtung, CC-BY-SA 3.0 New features since UseModWiki (for Wikipedia) ● Namespaces ● Special Pages with advanced functionality ● Skins ● Local (later: Commons) file upload ● Categories ● Templates ● Parser functions ● Table syntax ● Media viewer ● Visual editor ● Kartograph MediaWiki today ● Most widely used Wiki software ● Over 2,200 extensions ● Customizable via JavaScript gadgets and user scripts ● Comprehensive API Multiple caching mechanisms for large installations (e.g. Wikipedia)
    [Show full text]
  • Lessons from Citizendium
    Lessons from Citizendium Wikimania 2009, Buenos Aires, 28 August 2009 HaeB [[de:Benutzer:HaeB]], [[en:User:HaeB]] Please don't take photos during this talk. Citizendium Timeline ● September 2006: Citizendium announced. Sole founder: Larry Sanger, known as former editor-in-chief of Nupedia, chief organizer of Wikipedia (2001-2002), and later as Wikipedia critic ● October 2006: Started non-public pilot phase ● January 2007: “Big Unfork”: All unmodified copies of Wikipedia articles deleted ● March 2007: Public launch ● December 2007: Decision to use CC-BY-3.0, after debate about commercial reuse and compatibility with Wikipedia ● Mid-2009: Sanger largely inactive on Citizendium, focuses on WatchKnow ● August 2009: Larry Sanger announces he will step down as editor-in-chief soon (as committed to in 2006) Citizendium and Wikipedia: Similarities and differences ● Encyclopedia ● Strict real names ● Free license policy ● ● Open (anyone can Special role for contribute) experts: “editors” can issue content ● Created by amateurs decisions, binding to ● MediaWiki-based non-editors collaboration ● Governance: Social ● Non-profit contract, elements of a constitutional republic Wikipedian views of Citizendium ● Competitor for readers, contributions ● Ally, common goal of creating free encyclopedic content ● “Who?” ● In this talk: A long-time experiment testing several fundamental policy changes, in a framework which is still similar enough to that of Wikipedia to generate valuable evidence as to what their effect might be on WP Active editors: Waiting to explode ● Sanger (October 2007): ”At some point, possibly very soon, the Citizendium will grow explosively-- say, quadruple the number of its active contributors, or even grow by an order of magnitude ....“ © Aleksander Stos, CC-BY 3.0 Number of users that made at least one edit in each month Article creation rate: Still muddling Sanger (October 2007): “It's still possible that the project will, from here until eternity, muddle on creating 14 articles per day.
    [Show full text]
  • Semantic Mediawiki in Operation: Experiences with Building a Semantic Portal
    Semantic MediaWiki in Operation: Experiences with Building a Semantic Portal Daniel M. Herzig and Basil Ell Institute AIFB Karlsruhe Institute of Technology 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany fherzig, [email protected] http://www.aifb.kit.edu Abstract. Wikis allow users to collaboratively create and maintain con- tent. Semantic wikis, which provide the additional means to annotate the content semantically and thereby allow to structure it, experience an enormous increase in popularity, because structured data is more us- able and thus more valuable than unstructured data. As an illustration of leveraging the advantages of semantic wikis for semantic portals, we report on the experience with building the AIFB portal based on Seman- tic MediaWiki. We discuss the design, in particular how free, wiki-style semantic annotations and guided input along a predefined schema can be combined to create a flexible, extensible, and structured knowledge representation. How this structured data evolved over time and its flex- ibility regarding changes are subsequently discussed and illustrated by statistics based on actual operational data of the portal. Further, the features exploiting the structured data and the benefits they provide are presented. Since all benefits have its costs, we conducted a performance study of the Semantic MediaWiki and compare it to MediaWiki, the non- semantic base platform. Finally we show how existing caching techniques can be applied to increase the performance. 1 Introduction Web portals are entry points for information presentation and exchange over the Internet about a certain topic or organization, usually powered by a community. Leveraging semantic technologies for portals and exploiting semantic content has been proven useful in the past [1] and especially the aspect of providing seman- tic data got a lot of attention lately due to the Linked Open Data initiative.
    [Show full text]
  • The Future of Mediawiki and the Wikimedia Projects Erik Möller – August 6, 2005 the Purpose of Technology Research
    phase iv The Future of MediaWiki and the Wikimedia projects Erik Möller – August 6, 2005 The Purpose of Technology Research ● Many (thousands) very active content producers ● Very few (less than 10) very active developers ● New projects with specific needs ● Research can – Identify useful software enhancements – Write specifications and make recommendations – Supervise and review implementation process – Get the community involved in technical processes Wikimania – August 6, 2005 Wikimedia Research Network ● Attempt to bring indidividuals together to – work on specs – study Wikimedia content and communities – coordinate external contacts – organize community meetings ● Current activities – Single login specs – Development tasks – User survey Wikimania – August 6, 2005 Why peer review? ● Beyond existing mechanisms ● Main criticism against Wikipedia – From academia – From search engines – From pundits ● Fact-checking is a collaborative process ● As much work as the encyclopedia itself ● First step: Article survey Wikimania – August 6, 2005 Article survey Wikimania – August 6, 2005 Page protection ● Pages only editable by sysops ● Edit warring or distributed vandalism, decided by sysop ● English Wikipedia: avg. 12 protections per day ● However, some pages stay protected very long – Lack of processes or responsibility – e.g. Sexual abuse of children Wikimania – August 6, 2005 Alternatives ● Code which exists (recent, not in use): – User edits invisible copy of page – Sysops can “verify” a revision – Displayed copy is last verified one during period of protection ● Ideal solution: – If no sysop “verifies”, page is automatically published if no activity for n minutes Wikimania – August 6, 2005 My thoughts on peer review ● Must be “wiki-like” – Fast and easy – Consensus-based ● One basic concept for Wikipedia, Wikinews, etc.
    [Show full text]
  • How Does Mediawiki Work? 1 How Does Mediawiki Work?
    How does MediaWiki work? 1 How does MediaWiki work? Fundamental Introduction to MediaWiki Contents • How does MediaWiki work? • Documentation • Customization • Versions & Download • Installation • Support & Contact • Development All other topics • See navigation on the left You probably know Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and may possibly be a little bit confused by similar, but different, words such as Wiki, Wikimedia or MediaWiki. To avoid a possible confusion between the words you may first want to read the article about the names where the differences are explained. General Overview MediaWiki is free server-based software which is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It's designed to be run on a large server farm for a website that gets millions of hits per day. MediaWiki is an extremely powerful, scalable software and a feature-rich wiki implementation, that uses PHP to process and display data stored in its MySQL database. MediaWiki can be used in large enterprise server farms as in the Wikimedia Foundation cluster. Pages use MediaWiki's wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily. When a user submits an edit to a page, MediaWiki writes it to the database, but without deleting the previous versions of the page, thus allowing easy reverts in case of vandalism or spamming. MediaWiki can manage image and multimedia files, too, which are stored in the filesystem. For large wikis with lots of users, MediaWiki supports caching and can be easily coupled with Squid proxy server software. How does MediaWiki work? 2 Try out Wikitext Yes, you can easily modify pages and you can (temporarily) publish dummy sentences, and you can even (temporarily) completely destroy a page in a wiki.
    [Show full text]