Semantic MediaWiki

Semantic MediaWiki is one of the largest, and most complex extensions to MediaWiki - and also an indespensible one for enterprise use. The features it provides are partly described on the Metadata page.

This page exists to dive deeper into particulars.

SMWCon 2023

The 3-day program was fantastic!

One major advancement was the fact that Bernard Krabina opened ties with Open Collective so that individuals and organizations can donate money to the project.

Task tracking

HalloWelt! combines four extensions they created to make useful task tracking in (Semantic) MediaWiki

• Extension:SimpleTasks Tasks are checklist items that can be checked on or off to indicate if the task is open or completed.
• Extension:Checklists Make lists of checkboxes.
• Extension:DateTimeTools Provides date tools in VisualEditor.
• Extension:AtMentions Easily mention a user, with notification

Miriam Schlindwein presented how it's possible to create tasks, assign them to someone, add due dates and how they can be controlled

Realtime integrations with GitLab

See GitLab operations

Fixing Wikidata

Yaron Koren gave a great presentation (slides) called Enhanced Wikibase on how Wikibase (and therefore Wikidata) are missing features. He showed how he implemented these missing features in a series of developments. One is showcased at Wikidata Walkabout - a drill-down and query interface to Wikibase sites; powered by Anvesha - a JavaScript library. Video presentation

Natural Language Queries to Wikidata: A Naïve Prototype

architecture

Robert Timms - Sr. Software Engineer Wikibase Suite, Wikimedia Deutschland gave a talk (code slides try it) about querying Wikibase with an LLM. Slides 9-22 go from the application architecture to the 'tada' moment.

Not the goal of the talk, but he revealed some of the key drawbacks of using "AI" in the first place:

1. Outdated information
2. Prone to hallucinations
3. No sources (AI doesn't tell you how or why it claims to be authoritative.)

This is supposed to be addressed in part by using the RAG technique.

Major changes on interfaces of MediaWiki RDBMS library

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Database_access

Open Semantic Lab

Open Semantic Lab starts with the premise that Ontologies are key to standardize everything... but tools are needed to make ontologies applicable in everyday research. The OSL is the holistic and community driven platform to fulfill this roll... and links people (knowledge), machines (data) and algorithms (AI) equally.

Since last year, the project has been completely based on the industry standards of JSON-SCHEMA and JSON-LD, enabling new applications quickly with easy integration to any third party software. Experimental support has been added to achieve Python triggered workflows through REST APIs and LocalGPT Q&A + search assistance.

The whole subject is quite advanced, so it can be hard to wrap your head around it. A good way to understand the power of the Open Semantic Lab system is to look at an example use case where it was put into practice. At https://kiprobatt.de/wiki, they illustrate Intelligent battery cell manufacturing. The diagramming capabilities of the system are impressive - showing interactive (clickable) node graphs plus Draw.io integration. The underlying software application is not for the faint-of-heart. Checking the Special:Version page shows an extensive list of complex MediaWiki and Semantic MediaWiki extensions. The latest version's technology stack is represented here.

See also: https://opensemantic.world/ - a reference deployment of the OpenSemanticWorld packages. Here is a brief explanation of the key differences from 'vanilla' Semantic MediaWiki. You can see at Special:Version, the extensions and software components.

JavaScript Object Notation = A data representation format in JavaScript