User talk:Skierpage

Hi there, Skierpage, and welcome. It seems you have been very active last few hours. Good job. It's nice to have a new motivated contributor around. This project urgently needs a boost... the development is slumbering and yet the idea behind it (bringing semantics to the masses) is groundshaking in my opinion:-) --Joris Gillis 11:47, 24 January 2006 (CET)
 * Well gee, thanks! Yes, this could be huge, already the Semantic search is so impressive.  I'm still trying to figure out how Wikipedia concepts like date-time and coordinates relate to SMW Datatypes, lot to learn!

Type date
Hi Skierpage,

I am pleased to hear that you are going to work on improving Type:Date. My suggestions:
 * increase range, also for years B.C.
 * allow also incomplete dates (year, and year with month)
 * link the year part

Currently this functionality is more or less achieved with a set of one relation and two attributes, see Date-related tables, but having all with only one annotation would be more convenient.

Regards, --Patrick 11:54, 16 November 2006 (CET)


 * ISO8601 and XSD#date allow BCE years, just put a minus sign in front. The problem is PHP's strtotime takes -1810 and thinks it's date math.  Similarly, with a plus sign in front they should allow a year greater than 9999, though I'm unclear how they distinguish 1,912,0409 (AD) from 1912-04-09 in ISO8601 compressed format without dashes.  Incomplete dates should be fine, but PHP's strtotime inserts the month and day.  These are all bugs.  "Link the year part" is a great enhancement idea, I wonder if it needs to be localizable?  (A negative ISO8601 year would have to link to, e.g. 373 BC.)  I recommend using a template for date entry or just ISO8601 until we get this all working! -- Skierpage 00:16, 16 December 2006 (CET)

Job offer
Skierpage, seeing that you're a frequent producer here, I thought I should ask you... Where might I post a "Help Wanted" advertisement for a Semantic Mediawiki sysop? This would be a for-pay, part-time position on a commercial wiki. Payment would take the form of a modest hourly rate, plus lifetime ad revenues from certain portions of the site. --Centiare 08:18, 24 November 2007 (CET)

Suggestions for a structured demo
Skierpage, I'm asking you since you seem to be the most active Ontoworldian, but if there's a more appropriate "village pump" area, please feel free to move this request there.

I am seeking to build a structured semantic demonstration database within MyWikiBiz.com, which runs Semantic MediaWiki. The purpose of this demonstration is to turn on average people to the amazing capabilities of semantic queries. I feel that regular Internet surfers go blank when they hear semantic web described to them, but they say, "Wow, that's really cool" when they see an ASK query table in operation on a semantic wiki.

So, my questions are:


 * 1) Are there some very user-friendly demonstrations already in place that I might look at for guidance?
 * 2) Could you recommend an existing, fair-use database (of manageable size -- less than 200 members and between 10 and 30 meaningful attributes per member) that has not yet been semantically structured, but that semweb experts have been jonesing to see converted?
 * 3) Barring that, could you recommend some topic ideas for creating a semantic database that would (a) have stable long-term data, such as planetary measurements rather than NASCAR teams and races; (b) have appeal to average consumers; (c) has data that is fair-use or public domain; and, (d) hasn't been structured yet anywhere as a semantic database?

I'll keep an eye on this for responses, but suggestions are also welcome by e-mail to ResearchBiz (at) gmail (dot) com. -- MyWikiBiz 21:37, 8 January 2008 (CET)


 * Nothing springs to mind. Look at http://ontoworld.org/wiki/Sites_using_Semantic_MediaWiki You want useful facts and interesting relationships that surface when users browse or Special:Browse, and then you want impressive queries that reveal unexpected information.  (And timelines and geographic coordinates are cool.)  What makes regular people care about that?  I guess if it's a topic that interests them, but imdb.com and AllMusicGuide have the obvious general interest covered.  Maybe environmental info, though it's more statistics that need to be graphed.  If USA only, maybe politics, but where's the database to scrape?  People like User:Patrick have put intriguing test info on ontoworld.org like Dutch tram service and actor info, and the GFDL license allows reuse with restrictions.
 * These are good questions, I would ask them on the swikig mailing list and the smw-user mailing list. -- Skierpage 22:13, 8 January 2008 (CET)