Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-3277-20200709224633/@comment-9605025-20200717234627

ZeroOne, are you on a Fandom wiki that uses SMW or are you just hoping to get a similar feature enabled on a wiki?

Anon, I didn't know that Gamepedia already uses Cargo.

The user who wrote that blog, DinoKev, is the founder of the wiki I am currently admin/bureaucrat of. We do use SMW so this is something I have been paying attention to over the years as it comes up. If I recall correctly, SMW wikis will be among the last to migrate exactly because Fandom is not yet sure how to handle this issue.

Over the years it has been made clear the SMW itself is not seen as a viable option moving forward. I would assume there would also be significant trouble porting it to UCP. Cargo has been suggested on multiple occasions but the impression I always got from staff replies was that Cargo is still "too heavy" for Fandom to want to offer it as a standard extension. Also, upon a cursory look, it seems that switching from SMW to Cargo would definitely require significant effort from wikis.

My understanding is that SMW core is used primarily to build a database of custom property values for use/display on other pages. Wikis without SMW have found several workarounds using things like Lua and data templates to display individual values. In terms of generating lists, DPL is a fairly good replacement (with DPLforum as an even lighter option). However, there is no dedicated property feature. A quick workaround would be to just use a dummy template. So overall, I don't think Fandom will be adding SMW, Cargo, or "a replacement" any time soon; if at all.

What Fandom is lacking is the functions that come from the SMW add-ons such as Semantic Forms. I have to say that it makes it a lot easier to guide users through adding templates. With most common-use templates being infoboxes, I suppose the portable infobox editing interface takes care of that in most cases. Either way, SMW add-ons have also been reworked. In the case of Semantic Forms, there is now PageForms which can work with either SMW or Cargo but can also work on its own. I have asked (prior to UCP) about whether or not PageForms would be added. The reply was that it's a possability. No update since.

If anyone knows of SMW usage on Fandom in a manner I didn't mention, I would be interested to hear about it.