Wikia

The Semantic Forms, Semantic Drilldown, and Semantic Search extensions have been made available on this wiki. The input form for individuals became fairly workable early in 2010 and after several bad spells with software changes it became just a little better in December 2012; searching has been available for longer. Check Forum:SMW and other forums or post a new query on the help desk about progress and use; if no response within 48 hours, try User:Thurstan or User:rtol (whichever one has been most active recently).

Wikia made it available but stated that "Wikia's Community Team cannot provide support on using it". By late 2012 Wikia had even deleted its "Help" page on the subject. We are on our own except for outside help (e.g. the official website) and occasionally other Wikia users who have some insight into how it works and why aspects of it do not always work.

DiscussionsEdit

DemonstrationsEdit

Amsterdam/BDM - lists of births, marriages, deaths, etc, easy to add to any locality or county page; see {{Bdm}} for details
Descendants of Charlemagne (Generation 36) - Brooke Shields and a British Prime Minister were in the group but have been knocked out by Wikia software changes
Sample pages on the SMW wiki

Technical documentationEdit

For information of interest to template writers, please consult Help:Semantic MediaWiki/technical pages.

Where is it usefully in use?Edit

Wikia sitesEdit

These Semantic extensions are currently in use on the following Wikia wikis that may be worth studying (and on a couple of dozen others as listed elsewhere):

Common Sense
Giki (Government Wiki) - "95,347 property values for a total of 132 different properties. 113 properties have an own page, and the intended datatype is specified for 100 of those" at last look
GuildWiki
Istaria
Naruto
Psychology
Ragnarok Online 2 - "143,230 property values for a total of 55 different properties. 55 properties have an own page, and the intended datatype is specified for 55 of those" at last look
Recipes
Soul Eater
SporeWiki
The Third Turn - "547,779 property values for a total of 54,423 different properties. 14 properties have an own page, and the intended datatype is specified for 13 of those" at last look
The World Ends With You
Yellowikis
Yu-Gi-Oh - "235,273 property values for a total of 255 different properties. 376 properties have an own page, and the intended datatype is specified for 368 of those" at last look

Non-Wikia sitesEdit

Comprehensive list of over 500 sites - and Wikia users should add their site if it's not there
Historiographus - a history of science etc; "This wiki contains 3,405 property values for a total of 153 different properties. 195 properties have an own page, and the intended datatype is specified for 121 of those." (26 May 2009)
JewAge - Jewish genealogy site using Semantic MediaWiki; "This wiki contains 377,751 property values for a total of 96 different properties. 87 properties have an own page, and the intended datatype is specified for 86 of those." (5 Sep 2009)
Roux family in South Africa using Semantic Forms; "This wiki contains 6,459 property values for a total of 20 different properties. 23 properties have an own page, and the intended datatype is specified for 23 of those." (26 May 2009)

Until redirected in September 2010, the help page on Wikia Help said the following:

Template:Available on request

Semantic MediaWiki is a powerful extension that helps users to search, organise, tag, browse, evaluate, and share a wiki's content. While traditional wikis contain only text which computers can neither understand nor evaluate, SMW adds semantic annotations that allow a wiki to function as a collaborative database.

Wikia can enable Semantic MediaWiki (and related extensions Semantic Forms and Semantic Drilldown) on request for wikis which have users on hand who know how to use it, or are willing to learn and provide support for others.

The extension is very flexible, which means that it has complicated aspects which take time to master. Wikia's Community Team cannot provide support on using it, but the Semantic-MediaWiki.org wiki provides a manual, mailing list and chatroom for finding help. See also help on Semantic Search.

Where is it in use?Edit

These Semantic extensions are currently in use on the following Wikia:

Age of Conan
Animanga
Anime
Anime (Japanese)
Ars curandi (Portuguese)
Banjo
BestBrute - MyBrute Wiki
Bibliographie (German)
Blogging
Chaotic
Cocktails
Common Sense
Discworld MUD
Dooglegod
Dungeons and Dragons
The Elder Scrolls Fanon
Eushully
Fan Fic
Genealogy - Familypedia
Government Wiki - Giki
Grand Theft Encyclopedia (Spanish)
GuildWiki
Guild Wars 2 Wiki (French)
Istaria
K-On!
Magic: The Gathering
Museums
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
Naruto
Negima!
O2Jam
Our Brant - local history wiki for the County of Brant
PC - Computing Knowledgebase
Pirates of the Burning Sea
Psychology
Ragnarok Online 2
Railway Wiki (Japanese)
Routes - WikiSara highway information
Semantic Lyrics
Software
Software (German)
Soul Eater
SporeWiki
SuperWikia - superhero roleplaying
The Third Turn - backbone to NASCAR site's statistical services.
Warhammer Online
The Webcomic Wiki
Wikia Gaming
The World Ends With You
WoWWiki
Yellowikis
Yu-Gi-Oh
Yu-Gi-Oh (Spanish)
Yu-Gi-Oh Card Maker

It can also be tested on:

Preinstalled

Users and admins

Deleted user contributions: Gives sysops the ability to browse a user's deleted edits
Help:Global CSS and JS: Adds global user CSS and JavaScript to a page, fetched from Community Central
Editcount: Displays edit count of a user

Wiki tools

CategoryTree: AJAX based gadget to display the category structure of a wiki
CharInsert: Allows creation of JavaScript box for inserting non-standard characters
DPLforum: DPL-based forum extension using wiki pages.
EasyTimeline: Timeline extension
GoogleDocs4MW: Adds <googlespreadsheet> tag for Google Docs' spreadsheets display
ImageMap: Allows client-side clickable image maps using <imagemap> tag
Inputbox: Allow inclusion of predefined HTML forms
Cite: Adds <ref[ name=id]> and <references/> tags, for citations
LinkSearch: Search for Weblinks
MostPopularArticles: Get list of most popular articles
MostPopularCategories: Get list of most popular categories
MultipleUpload: Allows users to upload up to five files at once
ParserFunctions: Enhance parser with logical functions
Poem: Adds <poem> tag for poem formatting
Polls: Set up single-choice polls.
RandomImage: Provides a random media picker using <randomimage />
RandomSelection: Displays a random option from the given set
RSS feed extension: Displays an RSS feed on a wiki page
TabView and Tabber: Methods for having "tabbed" content
Timeline: Editors can create timelines of events using this tool's syntax.
Video Embed Tool: Embeds videos from YouTube, Metacafe and many other sites, and adds Video pages
WikiHiero: Syntax to display hieroglyph
YouTube: Embeds YouTube and Google Video movies

Spam and blocking

AntiSpamInput: Simple spambot blocking mechanism
ConfirmEdit: Simple captcha implementation
Regular Expression Name Block: Alternate user block (by given name, using regular expressions, controlled globally)
Regular Expression Spam Block: Filters out unwanted phrases in edited pages, based on regular expression
SpamBlacklist: Regex based anti url spam tool

Other tools

AjaxLogin: Dynamic box which allow users to login and remind password
SyntaxHighlight: Code syntax highlighter - supports many languages
ArticleMetaDescription: Adding meta-description tag containing snippet of the Article
MiniUpload: Allow users to upload new files directly from edit page
SharedMessages: Allows drawing "shared" template messages from the shared DB
Shared Help: Provides the Help namespace pages from this wiki into all wikis (controlled globally)
SiteWideMessages: Provides an interface for sending messages seen on all wikis

On request

This is a non-comprehensive list of MediaWiki extensions that are available upon request at Wikia. See also Category:Extensions enabled on request.

AbuseFilter: Tool for automatically catching non-constructive edits.
Calendar: Allows for embedding of a calendar into wiki pages.
DynamicPageList2: Universal reporting tool for wikis, which adds the <dpl> tag
GoogleMaps Extension: Easily create maps with wiki-fied markers

Semantic Extensions

Wikia does offer a family of extensions called "Semantic" extensions. The Semantic MediaWiki suite allows for annotated data from one wiki page to be pulled and queried on other wiki pages. For more about what Semantic is, please visit the SMW website's "Introduction" page. In order for any extension in the package to work, the parent Semantic MediaWiki extension must also be enabled.

Due to software upgrades, Wikia is not able to offer Semantic installation at this time. (Wikis that already have it may keep using it but unsupported. It is working passably well on Familypedia, for example.) You may still request SMW for your wiki at Special:Contact, where you will be added to a waiting list and re-contacted when the extension is again available for installation.

Semantic MediaWiki: The parent piece of the software that does the base tasks of allowing data annotations to be set and queried.
Semantic Drilldown: Allows for dynamic navigation through complex data.
Semantic Forms: Creates a form-based editing software for pages.
Semantic Result Formats: Adds a number of query tools to the base SMW package.

Restricted

CheckUser: Grants users with the appropriate permission the ability to check user's IP addresses and other information (This is generally a staff-only tool. A few wikis have a few users with this access, but it is not requestable.)
Protect site: Allows a site administrator to temporarily block various (this is enabled as deemed needed)

External Links

MediaWiki Extensions List at MediaWiki.org, the homepage of MediaWiki software