About me

Clarification

I am a graduate student in computer science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I am interested in wikis and in other methods of thinking, discussion, knowledge management, and creating ideas by groupthink. I started working with Wikis as an undergraduate student when I built a site for my debate club in Tel Aviv. In the last six years I continued to study and programmed in MediaWiki, but at low intensity, due to more pressing obligations. Only in 2012 I managed to make time to really learn deeply on wikis. But I wasted a lot of my time for development on a branch that was abandoned at the end: SMW +. I guess that's part of the risk of contributing to an open source product. Fortunately I heard that now there is an initiative to reuse at least some of the capabilities developed for the SMW+. Perhaps not all is lost. But some of my code is available as an independent extension. And you can contact me via email and ask for help or for more extensionsץ

Feel free to contact me with any questions by email Mail: orbartal+wikimediagmail.com

This page and my activities in MediaWiki represent me alone, and are preform voluntary on my free time. They are in no way represent my current (or any previous) employer or any other governmental, academic or business organization where I was or will belong to in the future, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Also even though I try to help as best as I could, and check the correctness of my words and the integrity of the code I write, I provide my code and advice with no obligation, not even for best efforts, unless explicitly stated otherwise. And of course all the code I post here is open source under the GPL.

Some of my code contributions to MediaWiki

Any file type gets its own Tag in extension: page schema https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/77896/
ReorderParserPhases http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ExtensionDistributor/ReorderParserPhases, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ReorderParserPhases
Fix bug Can't upload file with non-ASCII name (eg cyrillic) on Windows host https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1780
How to Localization SMW+ Manual, and a translation of the interface and terminology into Hebrew.

Unfortunately the company went bankrupt shortly after I sent them the translation. Although the product continues under a different company, but I Can not guarantee the manual is true for the newer versions of SMW+. Anyway anyone interested in SMW+ is welcome to consult with me.

Links to information on the semantic Wikimedia

Large MediaWiki Sites

http://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Main_Page - A wiki about mw sites

http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Wiki_of_the_Month - The best smw sites

http://smw.referata.com/wiki/Special:BrowseData/Sites - Search smw sites by the extension they use

http://www.wikia.com/Wikia - A host site for mw sites

Large MediaWiki Sites in Hebrew

A website on books and authors, written using semantic Wikimedia software

A site dedicated to civil rights and social rights in Israel, with a unique skin, but based on Wikimedia

What is the Semantic web

As usual the best explanation is in Wikipedia

Wikipedia page also contains links to many articles and sites are explained in depth the concepts related to the Web 3.0 and semantic web. But if you want to understand it more quickly, you should watch some of the short videos I collected, that explain the issue in less than 5 minutes.

Videos

What is an ontology

Intro to Semantic Technology in the DoD Business Mission Area

Evolution Web 1.0, Web 2.0 to Web 3.0

A short video about semantic web

Examples of Semantic MediaWiki functionality in real sites

http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Wiki_of_the_Month

http://www.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:SMW_extensions

http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Fall_2012/New_features_in_Semantic_Result_Formats

All form result formats samples

Semantic search

http://foodfinds.referata.com/w/index.php?title=Special%3AAsk&q=[[Category%3AAll+Good+Eats]]%0D%0A&po=%3FCity%0D%0A%3FCountry%0D%0A%3FPrice+Range%0D%0A&eq=yes&p[format]=broadtable&sort_num=&order_num=ASC&p[limit]=500&p[offset]=&p[link]=all&p[sort]=&p[order][ascending]=1&p[headers]=show&p[mainlabel]=&p[intro]=&p[outro]=&p[searchlabel]=%E2%80%A6+further+results&p[default]=&p[class]=sortable+wikitable+smwtable&eq=yes

[http://foodfinds.referata.com/w/index.php?title=Special:Ask&q=[[Category:All+Good+Eats]] &po=?City ?Country ?Price+Range &eq=yes&p[format]=broadtable&sort_num=&order_num=ASC&p[limit]=500&p[offset]=&p[link]=all&p[sort]=&p[order][ascending]=1&p[headers]=show&p[mainlabel]=&p[intro]=&p[outro]=&p[searchlabel]=…+further+results&p[default]=&p[class]=sortable+wikitable+smwtable&eq=yes Simple table query]

[http://foodfinds.referata.com/w/index.php?title=Special:Ask&q=[[Category:All+Good+Eats]] [[Country::Israel]]+ &po=?Country ?City ?Location &eq=yes&p[format]=table&sort_num=&order_num=ASC&p[limit]=50&p[offset]=&p[link]=all&p[sort]=&p[order][ascending]=1&p[headers]=show&p[mainlabel]=&p[intro]=&p[outro]=&p[searchlabel]=…+further+results&p[default]=&p[class]=sortable+wikitable+smwtable&eq=yes Same query but filter result: only from Israel]

[http://www.theaquariumwiki.com/Special:Ask?title=Special:Ask&q=[[Category:Fish]] [[Difficulty::Very+Easy||Easy]]&po=?Availability ?Difficulty &sort_num=&order_num=ASC&eq=yes&p[format]=broadtable&p[limit]=500&p[headers]=&p[mainlabel]=&p[link]=&p[intro]=&p[outro]=&p[default]=&eq=yes Filter by limited allowed value list]

http://www.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:City - Embedded query inside a page.

Semantic search result as a map

Semantic search result as a text/coordinates table:

http://foodfinds.referata.com/w/index.php?title=Special:Ask&q=[[Category:All+Good+Eats]] [[Country::Israel]]+ &po=?Coordinates &eq=yes&p[format]=googlemaps3&sort_num=&order_num=ASC&p[limit]=50&p[offset]=&p[link]=all&p[sort]=&p[order][ascending]=1&p[headers]=show&p[mainlabel]=&p[intro]=&p[outro]=&p[searchlabel]=…+further+results&p[default]=&p[geoservice]=geonames&p[zoom]=&p[width]=auto&p[height]=350&p[centre]=&p[type]=roadmap&p[zoomstyle]=default&p[typestyle]=default&p[autoinfowindows]=0&p[kml]=&p[gkml]=&p[fusiontables]=&p[resizable]=0&p[tilt]=0&p[kmlrezoom]=0&p[poi]=1&p[imageoverlays]=&p[markercluster]=0&p[searchmarkers]=&p[staticlocations]=&p[icon]=&p[visitedicon]=&p[forceshow]=1&p[showtitle]=1&p[hidenamespace]=0&p[template]=&p[title]=&p[label]=&p[lines]=&p[polygons]=&p[circles]=&p[rectangles]=&eq=yes

Same result as a map:

http://foodfinds.referata.com/w/index.php?title=Special%3AAsk&q=[[Category%3AAll+Good+Eats]]%0D%0A[[Country%3A%3AIsrael]]+%0D%0A&po=%3FCoordinates%0D%0A&eq=yes&p[format]=googlemaps3&sort_num=&order_num=ASC&p[limit]=50&p[offset]=&p[link]=all&p[sort]=&p[order][ascending]=1&p[headers]=show&p[mainlabel]=&p[intro]=&p[outro]=&p[searchlabel]=%E2%80%A6+further+results&p[default]=&p[geoservice]=geonames&p[zoom]=&p[width]=auto&p[height]=350&p[centre]=&p[type]=roadmap&p[zoomstyle]=default&p[typestyle]=default&p[autoinfowindows]=0&p[kml]=&p[gkml]=&p[fusiontables]=&p[resizable]=0&p[tilt]=0&p[kmlrezoom]=0&p[poi]=1&p[imageoverlays]=&p[markercluster]=0&p[searchmarkers]=&p[staticlocations]=&p[icon]=&p[visitedicon]=&p[forceshow]=1&p[showtitle]=1&p[hidenamespace]=0&p[template]=&p[title]=&p[label]=&p[lines]=&p[polygons]=&p[circles]=&p[rectangles]=&eq=yes

More examples

Compound query with different colors

Category:Maps examples

Semantic search result as image gallery

[http://semantic-mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Ask&q=[[Category:City]] &po=?Population &eq=yes&p[format]=gallery&sort_num=&order_num=ASC&p[limit]=&p[offset]=&p[link]=all&p[sort]=&p[headers]=show&p[mainlabel]=&p[intro]=This+is+a+gallery+caption&p[outro]=&p[searchlabel]=…+further+results&p[default]=&p[class]=sortable+wikitable+smwtable&p[widget]=&p[navigation]=nav&p[perrow]=&p[widths]=&p[heights]=&p[captionproperty]=&p[imageproperty]=&p[redirects]=&eq=yes This is a gallery caption]

Category:Gallery examples

Semantic search result as different graph formats

http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Jqplotseries_examples

Demo:Jqplotchart/Population

timeseries format: time chart with two lines + original data source + comments + tabs

Demo:Dygraphs/Annotate gas chromatogram

Demo:Dygraphs/Spectral Distribution Curves

http://en.openei.org/wiki/Russia

http://en.openei.org/wiki/Special:Ask?title=Special:Ask&q=[[Category:Energy+Generation+Facilities]]&po=?GeneratingCapacity &sort[0]=GeneratingCapacity&order[0]=DESC&sort_num=&order_num=ASC&eq=yes&p[format]=broadtable&p[limit]=10&p[headers]=&p[mainlabel]=&p[link]=&p[intro]=&p[outro]=&p[default]=&eq=yes Simple number table] --> [http://en.openei.org/wiki/Special:Ask?title=Special:Ask&q=[[Category:Energy+Generation+Facilities]]&po=?AvgTempGeoFluidIntoPlant &sort[0]=AvgTempGeoFluidIntoPlant&order[0]=DESC&sort_num=&order_num=ASC&eq=yes&p[format]=google-piechart&p[limit]=3&p[headers]=&p[mainlabel]=&p[link]=&eq=yes Pie chart

http://en.openei.org/wiki/Special:Ask?title=Special:Ask&q=[[Category:Energy+Generation+Facilities]]&po=?GeneratingCapacity &sort[0]=GeneratingCapacity&order[0]=DESC&sort_num=&order_num=ASC&eq=yes&p[format]=google-pie&p[limit]=10&p[height]=&p[width]=&eq=yes Simple number table 2] --> [http://en.openei.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Ask&q=[[Category:Energy+Generation+Facilities]]&po=?GeneratingCapacity &eq=yes&p[format]=jqplotchart&sort[0]=GeneratingCapacity&order[0]=DESC&sort_num=&order_num=ASC&p[limit]=10&p[offset]=&p[link]=all&p[sort]=GeneratingCapacity&p[headers]=show&p[mainlabel]=&p[intro]=&p[outro]=&p[searchlabel]=…+further+results&p[default]=&p[distributionsort]=none&p[distributionlimit]=&p[min]=&p[direction]=vertical&p[charttitle]=&p[charttext]=&p[numbersaxislabel]=&p[labelaxislabel]=&p[height]=400&p[width]=100%25&p[valueformat]=%25d&p[ticklabels]=1&p[theme]=&p[filling]=1&p[chartlegend]=none&p[datalabels]=value&p[colorscheme]=&p[chartcolor]=&p[class]=&p[charttype]=bar&eq=yes jqPlot Chart

Semantic search result as calendar

Demo:Event calendar – different color and icon for each type event

Display result of two queries in one calendar, each result in different color.

a Recurring event For example:Meet bob every Sunday at 8:00.

More formats for Semantic search result

Demo:Listwidget alphabetic list

Demo:Tagcloud, all

Help:Slideshow format

[1] Energy Resources Data import online from other site, update in realtime.

[2] Result from several queries combines

Semantic_Glossary

http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_Glossary

http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Tooltip

Semantic Social tools and alternatives

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_Social_Profile

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SocialProfile/Screenshots

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:Semantic_Social_Profile

Form

SMW+ example sites

http://nyc.pediacities.com/facets/Discover/

http://nyc.pediacities.com/facets/index.php/Special:DataExplorer

Other uses of Semantic MediaWiki

Enterprise architecture

http://www.tmforum.org/TMForumFrameworx/1911/home.html

Open source global map

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html

http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page

Math proof wiki

http://www.proofwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

Client case study: The USA government

After 9/11 in an Attempt to improve the knowledge management inside it’s intelligence organizations the U.S. government began to use software for creating websites Wikimedia management and knowledge sharing among employees of various intelligence agencies.

Everybody is using wiki:

Who is using wiki, and for what.

United States Intelligence Community - Intellipedia

United States Department of State – Diplopedia

United States Department of Defense - DoDTechipedia

As you can learn from this video, the wiki and the web increase intelligent capabilities.

And some more examples…

And for that purpose it even sends it agents to special courses on how to use Web 2.0.

It also increase its information security, and help it to avoid the next wikileak (despite the names similarity wikileaks and mediawiki have nothing in common). According to interviews with senior Foreign Ministry:

Intellipedia

Interview tube with Intellipedia initiators, or in youtube

A short video about the collaboration intelligent .

CIA Fighting Terrorists on Social Media

Google and Intellipedia

Diplopedia

A lecture video about stat department wiki: diplopedia. Works only on internet explorer?!?

http://scienceblog.com/34113/diplopedia-a-success-at-us-department-of-state/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100520112345.htm

http://diplopedia1.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html

DoDTechipedia

http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/innovations/DodTechipedia

Interesting designs (skins) for MediaWiki

The skin (design) determines the appearance of the wiki, the menus and shortcuts that appear around each page. The Wikipedia skin, MonoBook, is the most famous skin, but far from been the only skin, or even the most beautiful useful skin. In here there are links to many examples of wikis with different skin (designs from all around the web:

Sites that are using original skins

A French Children wiki, that look and feel like an iPhone app.

University wiki site

Company that design MediaWiki Skins Round skin used by microformats

Dark skin used by Hackerspaces

http://oberwiki.net/Main_Page

You would not believe this site is MediaWiki

http://www.organicdesign.co.nz/

http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

http://www.piratenpartei-nrw.de/

http://venicewiki.org/wiki/Home

http://de.flyerwiki.net/index.php/Hauptseite

Collection of MediaWiki skins

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gallery_of_user_styles

http://www.sciencemedianetwork.org/wiki/Mediawiki/Examples

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gallery_of_user_styles

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Sites_using_MediaWiki/gallery

http://www.sciencemedianetwork.org/wiki/Mediawiki_access/SkinSelection

http://www.sciencemedianetwork.org/wiki/Mediawiki/Examples

http://www.sciencemedianetwork.org/wiki/Mediawiki/

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/tech-for-sustainability-wikis/GgjkGYhYMEc

Special features in Wikimedia skins

Toggle between the two skins

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SkinPerPage

How to write a new MediaWiki skin

http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-MediaWiki-Skin-from-Scratch

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-mediawiki/index.html

http://www.amazon.co.uk/MediaWiki-Skins-Design-Richard-Carter/dp/1847195202

Working with MediaWiki - Yaron Koren new book about mediawiki.

More skins

http://www.wikigender.org/index.php/New_Home

http://www.steeple.org.uk/wiki/Steeple:Current_events

http://paulgu.com/wiki/Mediawiki_Skins

http://ami-communities.eu/wiki/AMI%40Work_on-line_Communities

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Portal:Main

http://www.grandtheftwiki.com/Main_Page

Index of software and sites that use Wiki methodology

http://www.wikimatrix.org/ - Huge site to compare wiki software

http://wikiindex.org/Welcome - A wiki site about wikis

http://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Main_Page - A wiki site about mediawiki sites

http://features.sheep.art.pl/FrontPage - The Wiki Features wiki

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiChoicetree – Another site about wiki

http://www.wikisym.org/ - Conference on Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_software - From Wikipedia site

Companies that operate in the area

http://wikiworks.com

http://diqa-pm.com/en/DataWiki (Continues the SMW+ project)

http://www.blue-spice.org

A list of companies from all over the world in http://www.wikimatrix.org/consultants/MediaWiki/-/-

Companies in Israel

http://www.active.co.il/ חברת אקטיב-טק מפעילה את אתר [../../www.wiki.co.il www.wiki.co.il]

http://atarplpl.co.il/

http://www.methoda.co.il

http://www.wit.co.il/Wit

Jobs for Wikimedia developers

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Professional_development_and_consulting

http://wikihr.net/Start_Here

http://wikihr.net/MediaWiki_Developers_For_Hire

Semantic MediaWiki Packages

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_Bundle

http://diqa-pm.com/en/DataWiki

http://www.blue-spice.org/products/solutions/bluespice-free/

https://www.semantic-apps.com/en/Main_Page

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Software_bundles

SMW+

http://www.slideshare.net/DIQA_Projektmanagement/datawiki-semantic-enterprise-wiki-v171?from=ss_embed

http://diqa-pm.com/en/DataWiki

http://diqa-pm.com/site/images/2/2f/DataWiki_171_User_Manual_v10.pdf

http://diqa-pm.com/site/images/3/39/DataWiki_171_Administration_manual_v11.pdf

Wiki revolution in our lives

http://www.slideshare.net/LLudwig/what-is-artificial-memory - Imagine a world where every word and phrase that is said or written is attached to its dictionary definition link (or any other definition the speaker chose to give it the context of the court when he said the word). No more misunderstandings or deliberate evasions, the exact meaning of what is being said. Just think how this will affect the promises of politicians before the election. Link To the memory manifesto.pdf manifest file.

Hierarchical File Systems are dead - File management as performed today on pc is perhaps fit to computer software and hard drives capabilities and users’ needs as they were 20 years ago. But are misfit to today abilities and needs, in the era of the global internet and user friendly interfaces. Today we still use the old hierarchical arrangement of files and folders. Each file is contained by only one folder, which itself is contained in only one folder, etc… so each file as a single path to it.

In the future we shell manage every hard drive with a browser and database software. Each file will have a unique url inside the computer (End to broken Links after a file was moved to another folder or a folder name in its path was changed) and the same file will belong to many hierarchies. Similar to pages and categories in a wiki site.

It will also improve search and file management. And of course, no more duplicate files on your computer, and any file will have its complete edit history, and several users could work on the same file from different account at the same time, like in a version control software (svn, git)..

It so clear that we need it, and so easy to implement, that it is not clear what take it so long to be the default choice in file management?

Wiki as a personal diary, link2

Some of my code contributions to MediaWiki

Links to information on the semantic Wikimedia

Large MediaWiki Sites

Large MediaWiki Sites in Hebrew

What is the Semantic web

Videos

Examples of Semantic MediaWiki functionality in real sites

Facts box

NLP (Natural Language Processing)

Drill down

Semantic search

Semantic search result as a map

Semantic search result as image gallery

Semantic search result as different graph formats

Semantic search result as calendar

More formats for Semantic search result

Semantic_Glossary

Semantic Social tools and alternatives

SMW+ example sites

Other uses of Semantic MediaWiki

Client case study: The USA government

Intellipedia

Diplopedia

DoDTechipedia

Interesting designs (skins) for MediaWiki

Sites that are using original skins

You would not believe this site is MediaWiki

Collection of MediaWiki skins

Special features in Wikimedia skins

How to write a new MediaWiki skin

More skins

Index of software and sites that use Wiki methodology

Companies that operate in the area

Companies in Israel

Jobs for Wikimedia developers

Semantic MediaWiki Packages

SMW+

Wiki revolution in our lives