Help:Water Cooler (technical)

Water Cooler Technical post
The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Centiare, including semantic tagging.
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Year_started

Hi, the starting year of an activity is marked as required - but I don't have that information for many businesses where I have the basic data to be put online. Also many companies here in town would probably like to be in the directory, but for now don't have e-mail and website. How to deal with these? Thanks! --SabineCretella 03:54, 13 January 2007 (PST)

In cases where you have allowed for a semantic attribute for which you have no data, you have two simple choices:

You can leave the data field blank, and the attribute will not render in the page. (Probably your best choice, if you anticipate that one day you will have the data, and you'll come back and complete it.)
You can remove the attribute altogether. It won't hurt any infobox to remove an attribute element. (Probably a good choice, if you believe that the attribute is irrelevant and/or that you'll never obtain that data point.)

I hope that this helps answer your question! --MyWikiBiz 06:26, 13 January 2007 (PST)

Sabine is referring to the template itself where 'founded' is a required element. As you say, one can still choose whether or not to use a semantic attribute within any of the templates/infoboxes. In this case, founded is required because potential customers typically want to be able to determine the number of years an entity has been in business. I would suggest that Sabine use a general date if a specific date is not available at this time. Centiare 07:14, 13 January 2007 (PST)

Whoops, I forgot that in some Infoboxes, certain elements are required, or rather, even in their absence of data the field label will still show up. Yes, it seems that either "living with" the empty appearance of the label, or filling in an estimated date, are the only solutions (other than Centiare modifying the template to not require this field). --MyWikiBiz 07:44, 13 January 2007 (PST)

I reviewed the infobox trying to recall why founded was a required field. I initially considered changing it to variable, but then remembered that we definitely want a consistent record of the number of years in business for all listed entities. Centiare 08:07, 13 January 2007 (PST)

Semantic Categories

How would I go about adding "by Category" to the ASK query on Directory:KJ Kitchens? Thanks---OmniMediaGroup 08:23, 19 January 2007 (PST)

Just add a category filter at the start of the query. In this case, it would look something like this:

<ASK Mainlabel="Article" Header="show" Link="all">
[[Category:Soup Recipes]]
[[Page Of::*|Section]]
[[Page Of::<q>[[{{FULLPAGENAME}}]]</q>]]
</ASK>

Since your present recipes are all soups, the query won't change the current ASK results. However, once you add a non-soup recipe, you'll see that the query will only show recipes tagged with the soup recipe category. Snerfling 09:17, 19 January 2007 (PST)

Moving

If I gave an article a stupid title is there a "move page" possibility like on wikipedia?

Just for sysops. We've got the system locked down pretty tight to avoid the type of mayhem being enjoyed at WP. I've got some experience in these types of open boards, so that's why we established the non-disposable email account requirement as well. An ounce of preventation ... Snerfling 17:55, 3 February 2007 (PST)

Movie Tags

OK, here's our movie Centiare:ACR workspace - who wants to start? Let's use just a regular bulleted list until we reach some type of consensus. At that point, I'll create the actual tags, provide definitions/usage policy, and run some demo ASK queries. Once we have a basic standard, then anyone else ever creating movie info can follow the same methods. Check out Attribute:Movie Title - this will serve as a useful reference point. Snerfling 16:54, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Some good tags would be

Director - already have
Starring
Producer
Awards

I don't think movies qualify as "main space" as they are owned unless under pd.

I don't want my minks theater to get buried if a main space "nosferatu" is created. Should I just create a Directory:Xfilm, transfer the info, and call it a day or can I redirect to my pages? Garrett 17:45, 13 February 2007 (PST)

You are correct - only public domain IP belongs in the Main space. Otherwise, it should be treated as a property page of the rightful legal owner. That isn't to say that one can't create an IMDB type of application - it just means that it can only use PD images/information.

Now, if something is rightly classified as PD Main space (PD/MS), there's nothing you or I can do about it - that's what NPOV is all about. (And, we can't redirect PD/MS to Directory/User pages either - that's cheating and will be reversed.) However, to offer an olive branch towards various warring factions competing over certain subjects, we've got Centiare:Aficionados.

In your case, just like boxing, you can tag both a Relation:Subject Interest & Relation:Contributor To. In the case of Nosferatu, you could post up a stub in the MS, list your interests as movies, tag your full-on Nosferatu contribution, and you'd have a nice link back to your protected Directory listing(s). Snerfling 11:58, 14 February 2007 (PST)

The 50 Pound Sack of Potatoes

So, I just got home from the warehouse club where I got a great deal on a 50 pound bag of potatoes. I boot up my computer and go do a Google search for (recipe potatoes ingredient). Coming in number three: KJ Kitchens Famous Cheezy Potato Casserole. OK I take the bait and click the link. "Centiare, what is this new internet site!" So I scroll down the page, looking over the recipe, and I get to the bottom and see "Recipe Ingredient potatoes" with that cute little magnifying glass. Well I have 50 pounds of potatoes to use up so maybe there are more recipes using potatoes. WOW, one click on that magnifying glass and I get a list. A wonderful list. Recipes contributed by:

Garrett's Grillin' Greats
Snerfling Does Snacks
KJ Kitchens
MyWikiBiz CheezWizBiz

One simple Attribute!!!

OK, I was trying to make a point...

I'm a big fan of CelebrityXYZ. This celebrity wears many hats in the entertainment business.

Actor
Director
Producer
Screenwriter
Musician
Singer

All these would be great Attributes. Now I'm the fan who wants to see all the articles about CelebrityXYZ and I can't remember ALL the Attributes that might apply.

Specific attributes that apply to a single area of Centiare are fine, but I think we also have to have some more general attributes like "Celebrity Name" so that if CelebrityXYZ has an article about directing a movie in one article and in another article they are acting in a movie, a fan (Centiare user) can just query Celebrity Name and get all articles.--OmniMediaGroup 10:56, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Can You Handle the Truth?

OMG, as usual, you're completely correct. More correct than you might think, so I guess it's time to spring a little secret: Relations can work both ways ie the Inverse of each other. For example, Relation:Capital Of is the inverse of Relation:Has Capital, and vice versa.

So far, we haven't really pursued two-way relations because they can be somewhat redundant. Besides, Centiare:ASK queries can be run at the target pages to produce, in effect, a mirror entry. One-way relations work great when we have a pyramid structure roll-ups, like Relation:Page Of for books @ KJ Kitchens or political subdivisions like Relation:State Located In at California.

For movies however, we have equal weight between people & movies (more of a 'box-like' structure), so we do need two-way relations like Actor In at an actor's page and Has Actor at the movie page. If we don't use inverse relations, then one would need to run an ASK query at either location to get all other relations to that page, BUT they would be dependent on all the information being there. Make sense?

So, IMHO, here's what needs to happen: I went through IMDB and listed all the respective info sections they have for both people & movies. Before I go and create a bunch of semantic tags, I need both of you to understand the technical issues (described above) & get on board with their utilization. I've listed them at Centiare:Entertainment Annotation in the same order as they appear at IMDB for us to discuss. Snerfling 14:18, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Simple semantic search

Fact - Cher is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and entertainer. Among her many accomplishments in music, television, and film, she has won an Oscar, a Grammy, an Emmy and three Golden Globe Awards.

Question 1 - If I were doing research on Cher, what values would I enter in the Simple semantic search to retrieve ALL the Centiare articles that mention her name? Is this a semantic possibility?
Question 2 - What would a properly formatted info box contain for Cher?

Ow, my head hurts - why do you have to ask such hard questions? Why don't we set up a page for Cher and see how it works? We have a basic Template:infobox_Person and Template:infobox_Personal (vital stats) for all individuals. You can see an example of the former at Directory:Marilyn Monroe.

As to entertainment credits, we had thought about creating a stand-alone infobox for celebrities (to be used in conjunction with the two above), but held off until we had determined the proper hooks. This would be a good time to go through the Entertainment Annotation tags and see if they are working in a way that will answer your query.

If we get that settled, then perhaps we can design/meld some sort of infobox to make the presentation look pretty. Would you like to look around WP a little bit to see what they're using? Snerfling 07:54, 17 February 2007 (PST)

I want to make a suggestion. We really ought to create an Attribute that we call "Common Name". This will have boundless functionality, for dealing with people with legal names like Reginald Dwight, or Reginald Kenneth Dwight, or Sir Elton Hercules John -- we can all agree his "common name" is certainly "Elton John". Same goes for Sandra ("Sandy" to her friends) Annette Bullock -- her "common name" is "Sandra Bullock". Same for the guy born William Jefferson Blythe III -- who has a "common name" of "Bill Clinton". This would solve, in an easy way, the "Cher" dilemma.

The neat thing, too, is that this goes beyond celebrities. "Ethanoic acid", while an accurate scientific name, is more recognized by the "common name" of "acetic acid". "Sodium chloride" has a "common name" of "salt" or "table salt". A compound of any of 16 different "iron oxides" and "iron hydroxides" has a "common name" of "rust".

If we got our editors and users accustomed to clarifying anything the least bit ambiguous about their content or their searches of content with this "Common Name" Attribute, we could save everyone a lot of grief searching only for First Names, Last Names, or Scientific Names -- all of which are valid attributes, of course -- if they would just have an easier time searching for "Common Name" Attributes like "Bill Clinton", "Cher", and "rust".

If there seems to be consensus around this, I'll be happy to get the Attribute started, and fill in at least 10 articles in need of a "Common Name". --MyWikiBiz 09:43, 22 February 2007 (PST)

Excellent points. I just created Attribute:Common_Name & Attribute:Scientific_Name. You can follow the links to the some of the placeholder data. OMG should be able to search for all information related to Directory:Cher using this attribute.

As far as personal information, we already have Infobox Person & Infobox Personal that can handle standard information. We also have Entertainment Annotation to record & report on any specific nominations, awards, categories, etc. Snerfling 10:16, 22 February 2007 (PST)

Book ACR Tags

Category Suggestions

Books
Book Reviews

Attribute and Annotation Suggestions

Book Title:=The Wisdom of Crowds
Author Of::James Surowiecki
Date:=2005
ISBN:=0385721706
Publisher Of::First Anchor Books
Reviewed By:=

Great list - see book ACRs categorized here; note use of relations for authors/publishers. This is similar to movie actors/producers in that ASK queries will x-reference publications-authors-publishers. Snerfling 12:12, 22 February 2007 (PST)

Medical Tags

OK, here's our medical Centiare:ACR workspace. Let's use just a regular bulleted list until we reach some type of consensus. At that point, I'll create the actual tags, provide definitions/usage policy, and run some demo ASK queries. Once we have a basic standard, then anyone else ever creating medical info can follow the same methods. Snerfling 17:31, 13 February 2007 (PST)

How do our Attributes and Relations stack up?

Reviewing some of the other largest wikis that have deployed Semantic Mediawiki, I have noticed a somewhat consistent pattern -- several of the largest of these so-called "semantic" wikis are barely utilizing Attributes and Relations.

WIKI	TOTAL PAGES	ATTRIBUTES deployed	RELATIONS deployed
BibleWiki (Bible)	178,876	2	7
Archiplanet (Architecture)	121,256	22	8
HumanCell (Biology)	51,233	0	1
WikiCompany (Business Directory)	23,378	8	22
Wikible (Bible)	7,496	11	30
OntoWorld (Semantic Web)	6,450	302	402
CaseWiki (Case Western Reserve)	5,361	10	25
Centiare (Free Directory)	4,049	154	23
SourceryForge (Occult Knowledge)	4,024	1	24

As Centiare grows, we should probably keep an eye on not just our number of pages, but on the number of our Attributes and Relations -- not to mention how frequently they're being coded into article pages. --MyWikiBiz 14:52, 21 February 2007 (PST)

One reason the other SMW sites don't have as many ACR tags is that they are primarily focused on single topics. Another issue to consider is tag proliferation, even at a limited level, which is characterized by under-utilized ACRs. That is, similar tag names are created in an attempt to provide differentiation in lieu of categories, so the actual usage per tag is low. And yet one more thing is many of the ACRs are red-linked ie there aren't any actual page value assigned to the tags.

The true test of effective use of tags is topic specificity, commonality (within groupings), category differentiation, and actual page values. It's a sure sign things are out of whack if any of these characteristics appear to be out of balance. Snerfling 17:42, 21 February 2007 (PST)

Friends Relations

Could we add the profile pick of each friend in with the friends semantic box? It would look cool and classy if we did it right. Garrett 18:57, 5 March 2007 (PST)

Not sure what you mean. Could you mock up a simple wikitable that illustrates what you'd like the end result to look like? Snerfling 07:32, 6 March 2007 (PST)

Garrett, do you mean "picture" when you say "pick"? That's what I'm guessing. Seems to me, to make that work, the profile picture would have to be tagged in some uniform fashion AND the MediaWiki software would have to be able to render images in ASK tables. Sounds challenging. Might be something for an "eventual To Do" list. --MyWikiBiz 07:49, 6 March 2007 (PST)

Exactly what I was going for; but a million other things need to happen first.

I say create a Directory:Centiare/Goals and write short, medium, and long term goals for we what to accomplish with centiare. Writing goals down helps to materialize them better. Stupid Oprah - I should really find something to do after Jeopardy. Garrett 08:33, 6 March 2007 (PST)

Regardless of the time frame, the goal is the same: increase members & contributions (main space + directory listings). So the question then becomes "what is the best way to accomplish this?" It appears the conclusion boils down to brute force marketing (BFM).

While BFM comes in many flavors, its essential objective is to increase market awareness. The techniques listed so far include YouTube stunts, sincere letter writing campaigns, and Google search references. Are there any others that we haven't considered? Snerfling 08:46, 6 March 2007 (PST)

There are lots of other ways to market Centiare. Create a blog. Write current "hot" news stories to draw in searchers. Post sincere comments on other blogs and message boards. Create a MySpace page (already done -- it's not generating any heat). Convince popular bloggers to write a story about us (you know, that damn Pandia article is one of our top inbound feeds). Convince popular journalists to write a story about us. Set up LiteBrite sets in metro areas -- er, scratch that. --MyWikiBiz 19:50, 6 March 2007 (PST)

Extensions

Centiare supports a full range of audio, video, widget, social bookmarking, etc extensions that can be included within Directory listings. Here's a brief list and one in action:

<ASK format="ul"> [[Page Of::Centiare:Extensions]] </ASK>

Spam filter blocks my amazon associates

This is a bit irksome, could you please unspam amazon. I'm having trouble displaying the problem as the filter keeps blocking me. Garrett 22:06, 5 April 2007 (PDT)

Okay, this is getting a bit weird. I reported the same problem to the Grand Poobah a couple of days ago, and he said, "Errr, it seems to work for me." So I tried again, and I did NOT get the threatening "spam link blocked" message. It worked (Liz Cohen page). I would just "try again", Garrett, and if it still doesn't work, hopefully Karl will look into this a bit more. Maybe we could/should contact Amazon -- surely they had enough Mediawiki wikis linking to them before, to have seen a problem ticket at some point. --MyWikiBiz 05:56, 6 April 2007 (PDT)

Centiare doesn't support kanoodle advertising

They give me this piece of adcode here

I've surrounded it with both <embed> and <adsense> but to no avail. Could you create a new <kanoodle></kanoodle> extension like you did for adsense?

Infobox width

Could we decide on a universal vertical infobox width. My sharethis box can only look right on either the personal or business but not both <embed> <script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> _uacct = "UA-38898916-1"; urchinTracker(); </script> </embed> Garrett 17:29, 23 April 2007 (PDT)

I don't have any particular opinion; does it need to be standardized? Snerfling 20:42, 23 April 2007 (PDT)

I'd like to have my sharethis box and any other supplemental box the same width so it looks nice throughout the site if I put it above or below the box - maybe a 20em?

Garrett 06:56, 24 April 2007 (PDT)

Heads Up

This is just a heads up but if you want infoboxes to render properly for internet explorer within html colors create one infobox for all the boxes you want to include and

{| align=right |- | |}

the whole thing

Garrett 14:03, 28 April 2007 (PDT)

Is this per what you did with Stetson Hats? That looks flashy and nice, for a consumer product! --MyWikiBiz 20:00, 28 April 2007 (PDT)

I just wanted 7% off my prom fedora so I created the article in like 20 minutes :)! Garrett 22:26, 28 April 2007 (PDT)

LaTeX

JA: The LaTeX module does not appear to be loaded. Jon Awbrey 05:14, 17 May 2007 (PDT)

You are correct. I briefly looked into months ago, but since we didn't have anybody using the \( function, I sort of put it on the back-burner. Do you know whether or not specific PHP modules have to be loaded (that aren't part of the std release), or is it something specific to the parser function that can easily be configured? Snerfling 06:58, 17 May 2007 (PDT)

JA: No, that's all I know about it. I've pretty much exceeded my teΧnical abilities just trying to spell "LaTeΧ". Jon Awbrey 07:10, 17 May 2007 (PDT)

Math has been installed and is working properly. Snerfling 19:52, 3 June 2007 (PDT)

Additional math rendering capabilities have been enabled. See Help:Displaying a formula for more information. Example:

<math>\sqrt{a^2+b^2}\) produces

\(\sqrt{a^2+b^2}\)

Along with the new math functions, hieroglyphics have also been enabled. You can refer to the meta to get a complete list of images. Example:

<hiero>A1</hiero> produces

Snerfling 06:56, 6 June 2007 (PDT)

SubPage Titles

The {{DISPLAYTITLE:xxx}} magic word has been enabled along with a minor hack of the MediaWiki display module. Used in conjunction with MW's built-in sub-page navigational "breadcrumb" feature, this magic word helps render a cleaner page look and eliminates directory path creep.

For an example of this capability, take a look here. Please note that with this function, wikilinks need to be referenced from URLs as page titles can now be rendering separately from actual page names. Snerfling 19:52, 3 June 2007 (PDT)

Link Search

The WP special page that displayed external links was recently released as a MediaWiki extension and has now been installed. Snerfling 15:49, 5 June 2007 (PDT)