SemanticWiki

From W3C Wiki

What hybrid vigor can we get from cross-breeding Wiki and the SemanticWeb?

What Wiki Offers the SemanticWeb

Wiki provides: Easy Names, Easy Editing, Communal Ownership, ...

InterWiki names almost perfectly match XML or N3 namespaces. The namespace list is fixed for the wiki, but maybe that could be just the default, and per-page overrides could be allowed. @prefix on a wiki page! See how "RFC':2396" turns into a link: RFC:2396 ? This does raise the usual spectre of DansCar.

Easy Editing -- well, sure, it's fine as it is. For formal languages saving should offer or require syntax checking.

Communal Ownership -- fine as is. (If it gets to be a problem we can require logins... There's an intermediate position where (perhaps on a per-page basis) changes can be offered by anyone, and anyone can view the changes offered, but they don't get committed and shown on the official page until someone with write access commits them. For simplicity, all unofficial changes happen in the same series, and no official changes can be made without accepted or rejecting the current chain of unnofficial changes. This must be an old Wiki topic... LinkMe?)

This is what is called staging in a CMS, and I don't remember much discussion about it in wikis. If you find such things, then either in MeatBall (MeatBall:FrontPage) or the C2 wiki. -- JürgenHermann DateTime(2003-03-30T03:39:44)

So how do you provide (RDF) data on a Wiki page?

  1. Have an entire page be data
    • a) Have page-naming conventions, like test.n3, although
   then they still look like normal pages.  maybe that's good/okay.
   Needs system-wide mime.types config file.   can't change the format without changing the
   name.
  • a) Have wiki store some metadata elsewhere. kinda messy -- or is it already doing
       that?
  • a) Have wiki store metadata in the file, but not show it (like Twiki did with %TOPIC).
  • b) Put some metadata in a standard format in the
   file, like -*- Content-Type: "foo/bar" -*-
  1. Have a section of a page be data
    • a) use existing stuff: `#pragma name value`
    • b) Have a magic-named section heading like == BEGIN DATA ==
    • c) Use the macro syntax [[data(...)]]
    • d) Use a new syntax like @data
    • e) Use an old syntax like RFC822 (see [1])
Is there any implementation of a SemanticWiki (or Wiki:SemanticWikiWikiWeb)? I'm very interested on it. -- PaoloCastagna

I made a prototype. It is very young. See http://wikisem.wikini.net/ (oh, I'm sorry... it's in french.)

There is also a very different approch with RDFWiki : see http://infomesh.net/2001/05/sw/#rdfwiki -- CharlesNepote

gnowsis rdf / wiki

the http://www.gnowsis.com research prototype project has a wiki approach that goes a few step beyond. I, Leo Sauermann am building the gnowsis / gnogno system as a personal RDF Server. I use a wiki as user interface to access complex RDF data. Some concepts It contains:

  • wiki permalinks and the wiki urls will definitely be used as rdf:about identifiers, they are correct uris and work fine.
  • the content of a wiki page IS DansCar. I have the feeling (and will prove it scientifically) that this works fine in personal, subjective way. So the wiki page = the idea = the concept behind. how this works exactly you will find out in November.
  • You will be able to author RDF data using the wiki.
  • you will be able to "link" a wiki page to other resources.

The system will be published in November 2003, I am open for personal discussion by email: leo(at)gnowsis.com


Also PeriPeri, rx4rdf, PlatypusWiki and UseMod:RdfForWikis

I've got some basic Java Semantic Wiki code ("Stiki"), will publish asap. -- DannyAyers