View source for Developing Wikipedia Plus

Wikipedia+ is fully functional, but has yet only a few thousand users (estimated). 

==WikipediaPlus and the Semantic Web==

The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_web Semantic Web] (web of meaning) is a successor to the WWW (web of text). The basic idea is, rather than having text, which humans process, data is have machine-readable so that computers can process it. Not only should this decrease barriers of human language between users (since computers could assist in translation), but computer-mediated queries could become possible, as opposed to simple text matching, as is still the case on modern search engines. W3C's semantic web language (RDF) associates each 'meaning' with a separate URI (web address).

The wide vocabulary and localisation of Wikipedia make it a natural candidate for a semantic web URIs, and Wikipedia+ is another step towards establishing them de facto as such. Currently, Wikipedia+ is designed for users of the WWW, and it simply issues an HTTP HEAD request to establish the presence or absence of a page with the required name. In the future, however, operations might not be so limited. For example, it could carry out a semantic query.

== XML File Formats ==

For a definition of the XML file used internally by Wikipedia+, to which it exports a list of sites, see the [http://www.wikipediaplus.org/downloads/WP-v1.0.xsd WP+ XML Schema].

== Input Welcome ==

Joint research proposals, interesting ideas and comments all welcome,
especially help porting the extension to alternative browsers.
Interested parties are invited to [[contact | get in touch]].