On 08/04/2008, S Page <info(a)skierpage.com> wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
> ... although if that can be hidden inside
> the template code, all the better.
Yes, use of a templates may not have to change at all.
Someone only has
to modify the template to output SMW syntax and property names in wiki text.
Good :-) I do like that ParserFunctions code allows a relatively
obvious interface to templates.
> Mostly what [infobox templates] need is
> standardisation
If all you're trying to do is capture information
from infoboxes,
DBpedia shows how much is possible already, and standardization can only
help. But at some point you'll want to tell machines what the template
field names represent. (DBpedia does an amazing job of inferring the
type of a template field, but still gets some wrong.)
I'm envisioning an actual list somewhere, yes.
The extensions
that extend the SMW extension are evidence that its formalism for
representing properties and datatypes within MediaWiki and thence in RDF
is useful. I hope any effort to "bring semantics to infobox templates"
would build on that.
The question there would be how likely SMW is to be installed on the
Wikimedia servers (and in this case on English Wikipedia). But if it's
relatively simple to retrofit in the templates' code, i.e. where the
casual editor doesn't have to think about it when editing, then the
absence of SMW certainly wouldn't be a blocker on a template
standardisation effort.
- d.