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LyricWiki:Semantics
From LyricWiki
This is not a policy of LyricWiki
It is an advocacy pages for users who want to see certain kinds of change.
LyricWiki uses MediaWiki, the software engine behind Wikipedia and its sister sites. There are a growing number of sites using a massive extension to this software called Semantic MediaWiki. This package allows websites to organize their data in ways machines can understand, making greater flexibility and ease of use. One of the main uses of this technology is to do away with lists, which have to be maintained by hand. The English Wikipedia has elected not to pursue this path, since they have so many editors to keep up pages, but LyricWiki uses programs more than people.
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[edit] Innovation
One of the reasons LyricWiki came onto the radar of the Web was because of its innovativeness and uniqueness. These novelties have faded as other sites are editable too now, and maintained by profit-driven companies with lots of staff on payroll. With our limited number of editors, we should rely on bleeding-edge technology to be both useful and cool. SMW delivers on all these fronts.
[edit] Reduce Redundant Writing
Suppose a random person does stumble across a song page on our site. Most likely, they're not interested in editing a page, but suppose they do. This song probably doesn't have the album data or much else on it besides the artist. If they are keen to add the album data, he or she needs to add it at the top of the page, the bottom of the page, edit the album page and the artist page. What a waste! Why is there not just one place to put this in, and let the software take care of the rest?! Only through Semantic data can we hope to accomplish this
[edit] Categories Simplified
New in SMW 1.2 is the ability to save queries to the Query namespace, kind of like a complicated category. This feature would allow us to drastically simplify our existing categories to Song, Album and Artist and then have an infinite number of pre-defined subsets. These could be clearly presented to newcomers, while advanced users could make their own searches easily.
[edit] Page Ranking Done
Our current page ranking system could be reduced to almost zero work. All data from the song page could be collected on the talk page without work, electronically. There would be a drastic reduction in work and time.
[edit] Negatives
The principle objection to SMW at this time would be that we'd have to upgrade our server software from MediaWiki 1.7 to 1.12 or greater. The last time an upgrade was attempted, the site was down for a week and a great deal of manpower was required to get it operational again. However, this isn't a deal-breaker because the number of security holes in older MediaWiki versions are not only known, but posted on the MediaWiki site as they are found. We must upgrade anyway, or risk exposure to hackers or worse.
[edit] External Links
- Semantic MediaWiki home
- SMW Sandbox - where you can make test page right away
- Working Example - a Death Cab For Cutie page on the Sandbox with live, auto-compiling of songs and albums on an artist's page.
- Semantic Forms - an extension for SMW that facilitates easy entry of data
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