User blog:Ioyka/Semantics

BackToTop
Progress. Actual progress.

I was finally able to add an extension to this Wikia. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, you'll notice a very subtle arrow fade-in on the bottom bar near the right side. That is the BackToTop extension in action. Clicking it brings you, for a lack of a more obvious name, Back-to-Top. Admitedly, this isn't anything earth shattering.

Frankly I've seen the same thing done better. This one is bigger and more apparent..

The important thing to note is that extensions can be installed here. I used that particular one for the reason it was simple. Next I plan on trying a much more complex one, SemanticForms.

SemanticMediaWiki
In order to get SemanticForms its dependancy SemanticMediaWiki must also be installed. SMW is used to create tables, forms, and user-queries.

This extension is not 100% what I want, but it's the best I can find. What I'm asking for is some kind of Javascript plugin that runs client-sided and toggles visibility of all elements sharing an ID, or hides information in expandable boxes. SMW runs user-queries which is done in PHP, a server-sided language, and this creates unnecessary strain later on.

In the past, SMW had several problems being developed. It's a resource hog on Wikia servers, and because of that you had to jump through hoops to get it.

"...For the last five years, Wikia has supported Semantic MediaWiki on our wikis and up until late last year offered installation of it upon request. In spite of this, SMW has never been particuarlly easy to maintain for Wikia. SMW is an extremely powerful software that adds significant strain to our database servers.

"Part of this was due to some of the ways SMW was initially written (which to the extension developers' credit, they have mostly fixed) and another part was due to the inherent nature of the platform. Setting and querying annotated data is always going to be a technically expensive process. Essentially, you are layering on a top-level database over the underlying running MediaWiki runs on. On just one wiki, this creates noticably lag in site speed. Now multiply that times 200 wikis and you begin to understand where the issues begin."

— DaNASCAT via Wikia's current approach

Additionally, they mention putting the Wikias requesting to use it on a waiting list, but they stopped doing this and discontinued the extension. Why this system? Can users not install extensions even if they have all the source files? Would my approach mitigate server strain? If not, can it be done from a separate server?