Categories

In Semantic MediaWiki, a category is a way to group pages together that share some common characteristics or belong to the same topic. Pages can be assigned to one or multiple categories, and categories can also have subcategories. This allows for organization and categorization of the content within a MediaWiki. Categories in Semantic MediaWiki also allow for data storage and querying, as categories can have semantic annotations that describe the relationships between the pages and the category.

Opencommons has a set of categories that relate to the kind of information being collected on the site. These include

• ActionCluster: There are more than 300 organizations participating in National Institute of Standards and Technology Global City Teams Challenge smart city technology projects, called Action Clusters. These participants include representatives from U.S. cities and states, major cities in other countries, government agencies, private companies, non-profits, universities, hospitals, and a variety of municipal-focused organizations.
• Best Practice: A municipal best practices trip is a type of study tour or field visit organized by local governments, non-profit organizations, or consultants to observe and learn from the best practices and innovative approaches being implemented in other municipalities. The purpose of these trips is to bring together local government officials, community leaders, and other stakeholders to share experiences and knowledge, and to find solutions to common challenges. The trips typically involve visiting different cities or municipalities to see first-hand the various programs, initiatives, and services being offered, and to meet with the local officials and stakeholders to discuss their experiences and challenges. The goal of a municipal best practices trip is to foster learning, collaboration, and the transfer of best practices from one municipality to another, with the aim of improving the quality of life for residents.
• Chapter: In OpenCommons a chapter is a collection of information about a particular topic or concept. The content of the chapter is written in wikitext, a simple markup language that allows for the creation of links, headings, lists, and other formatting elements. In addition to the traditional wikitext content, a chapter contains semantic annotations, which are special tags that provide structured information about the topic of the page. These annotations allow for the creation of relationships between chapters and the storage of data in a structured way.
• Event: The event form collects relevant events along with their dates and registration page and puts the next five events on the front page of the site.
• Municipality: Municipalities that host projects, organizations, products, news or webinars have a page in the knowledge base that gives basic information about founding, size and location. Municipalities hosting projects that have those municipalities in their "Participating Municipalities" field will be listed on the municipalities page automatically.
• News: The news form collects relevant news along with date and url of the announcement and puts the last five announcements on the front page of the site.
• Organization: Organizations that contribute to the community through projects, products, news or webinars can have a page in the knowledge base that gives basic information about formation, size and executives. Companies with projects, news, people and webinars that have those companies in their teams will be listed on the company page automatically.
• Person: People who contribute to the community through projects, products, news or webinars can have a page in the knowledge base that gives basic information about where they work and if possible link to their linkedin profile. People with projects, news and webinars that have those people in their point of contact will be listed on that person's page automatically.
• Product: The product form collects product literature along with dates of launch and lists those products on the organization site of the product manufacturer.
• Project: The project form collects project information and lists those projects on organization, municipality and person pages for all relevant supporters.
• Supercluster: This is the origional grouping of National Institute of Standards and Technology Global City Teams Challenge ActionClusters by industry sector and is no longer used.
• Webinar: The webinar form collects relevant webinar information along with their dates, presenters, presentations and video recording.

For each of these categories we have a form. The form fill in semantic annotations, which are special tags that provide structured information about the topic of the category. One category does not have a form, Supercluster. This category is not expected to change or require updating often. If changes are needed please contact Wilfred Pinfold. To access the forms for these categories look at the links in the left margin of the site. Under Authors all the "Add a" topics point at forms.