Benutzer:How can I solve common problems of Semantic Forms (Data design issues)

One common issue is how to use categories. The Wikipedia approach is to have many categories on each page, to identify all aspects of that page's subject. Semantic MediaWiki was created in part to eliminate the need for categories, by allowing for semantic properties to represent this data. The general Semantic Forms approach is to only have one category per page, and have this category be set by the main template in the page: in other words, it is recommended that users never enter category declarations directly. Some wikis have users enter category names through forms; when this is done, it is usually for fields that represent a "tag", holding information like the subjects of a book. Even this is not recommended, though: it is better to represent such information as a semantic property like "Has subject" or "Has topic", since it keeps the data structure clean, and using semantic properties offers many built-in advantages.

When creating a semantic property connecting any two "classes", or pages represented by different categories, you may be unsure about which way to point the property. Usually such relationships will be of the one-to-many variety, also known as parent-child relationships, in which each page of type A has a relationship to any number of pages of type B, while each page of type B always has a relationship to exactly one page of type A.

You may not be sure about whether to create one form or many for a set of related page types. For instance, in a wiki about restaurants, should you have a separate form/template/category set for regular restaurants, fast-food restaurants, diners etc., or a single form called "Restaurant", with a corresponding single template and category, that just uses a field to indicate the type of restaurant it is? A good rule of thumb is to look at the set of data that you want to be entered and displayed for each type of page. If it's the same across all the types, then you could probably use a single form/template/category set for all of them. However, if there's even one difference in the set of fields being displayed for any page type, then it probably makes sense to give such a page type its own form, template and category.