On 06/04/2008, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 06/04/2008, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> * They really want machine-readability from
Wikipedia. The infobox
> templates on Wikipedia are getting there. Mostly what they need is
> standardisation (is the image called "image", "Image" or
"Img"?), and
> a base template that's {{Persondata}} or a reasonable approximation.
> This is a matter of parser-functions in the template wikitext on the
> 'pedia, but it's something someone needs to take on as a project: to
> re-plumb the templates without breaking the nice exposed external
> interface. Who knows parser-function code and is feeling ambitious and
> patient?
Is it worth getting Wikipedia to use Semantic
MediaWiki? It would
allow for much more powerful machine-readability than templates, but
probably has hundreds of obstacles to trip over to get there.
Template standardisation struck me as a *feasible* way to the same
thing. It has the advantage that consistency would appeal to the sort
of geek who's happy to code parser-functions. And users are fine with
templates taking parameters and hiding the horrible plumbing behind a
nice interface.
The big problem I can see with Semantic MediaWiki is that it involves
horrible new wikitext syntax ... although if that can be hidden inside
the template code, all the better.
- d.