Grants:IEG/MediaWiki data browser/Profile

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Yaron Koren[edit]

I am a software developer and consultant, based in New York City. Since 2007 I've worked almost exclusively with MediaWiki, and mostly with a set of extensions based around Semantic MediaWiki. I'm probably best known as the author of the Semantic Forms extension. I also run the MediaWiki consulting company WikiWorks, created and help run the wiki farm Referata, and wrote the MediaWiki reference book Working with MediaWiki. My skills include PHP, Javascript, and interface design.

I'm working on this project, the MediaWiki Data Browser, because I think it represents the next step for my work with wikis and data. SMW is an ideal framework for entering and working with collaborative data, but there may be more lightweight and efficient ways to display the data once it's already entered, especially from mobile devices; and of course, most wikis don't have SMW installed, including Wikipedia itself. This may be the next step (after the major step of Wikidata, of course) in turning the structured text of wikis into usable data.