RichmondWiki.org is easier to update than ever. The wiki now allows anybody to add a new article simply by filling out a form. The first two forms available are for businesses and restaurants. You can access them here:
Instructions: Three Monkeys Example
- To create a new article for a restaurant using the form, simply click on the “Add a Restaurant” link above. It will open a new window.
- Enter the name of the new article into the text box. In this case, we’ll use “Three Monkeys”. Then click the “Add or edit” button.
- Fill in all of the fields with the restaurant’s information and write a description in the “Restaurant description” text box.
Click for larger image
- Click the “Save page” button. Or, click “Show preview” to see what the page will look like before saving it.
- Presto! Your new article is live on RichmondWiki.org and is already categorized in “Bars and Restaurants” and other relevant categories. No coding required!
Here’s the finished page for Three Monkeys. The data is displayed in the standard restaurants template, but the content can still be edited by anybody.
Future Forms
Eventually I will get around to adding forms for a wider variety of articles, including:
- Churches
- Charities
- Clubs/Organizations
- People (politicians, celebrities, executives, etc)
- Websites
- Buildings
- Parks
- Government entities
Please leave a comment if you have other suggestions or would like to see forms created for other types of articles. Additionally, the existing forms will get upgrades to include Google maps and other cool features.
Technical Details
The form functionality is made available through the Semantic Forms extension for Mediawiki. By “semantic”, we mean that much of the data that is added into these forms is relational. For example, every time a new article is created for a sushi restaurant, it is automatically categorized as “sushi” and also related to the other sushi restaurants in town. This allows for more advanced analysis of RichmondWiki.org articles.
For example, we can ask RichmondWiki to show us all the sushi restaurants on Main Street. Now you can start to see the potential of the semantically linked data! More blog posts on this to follow.
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