Help:Semantic MediaWiki

Semantic MediaWiki is a powerful extension which helps users to search, organize, 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.

How does it work?
Semantic MediaWiki works with attributes, which can be added to any page. Every attribute has its own kind (numerical, string, date, etc.), and second, any page can have for any attribute its own individual value (e.g., a string type attribute "Name" for a page can be set with any name of your liking). So in a SMW wiki you have lots of pages, each one with its individual set of individual attributes. Now you can make queries over all these pages, or maybe over the pages of a category, and ask for all of them that have one specific attribute set, for example, all pages with a specific "year of birth" attribute ("1984"). These queries can be made on a special page or inserted into a normal wiki page. You may choose the format in which to show your query results (table, list) and also additional attributes to show for every of your results. You also can make intersecting/uniting queries (asking for multiple attributes) and ask for a whole range on an attribute. This allows for complex database queries like "all blonde male Anime characters with dead parents and short temper", as long as all these attributes are set up correctly.

Where is it in use?
Here are some of the wikis where the Semantic extensions are currently in use:


 * 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)
 * Gundam Wiki
 * 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
 * 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
 * Life (Lithuanian) - Gyvosios gamtos enciklopedija
 * ArcadePT (Portuguese)

It can also be tested on:
 * SMW Test Wiki, where the forums and other pages may contain help and/or discussion
 * Sysop Test Wiki

See also:
 * 1) Sites outside Wikia (incomplete list on "Meta")