Landrace.Wiki:Mediawiki

Landrace.Wiki runs on MediaWiki, the same open-source platform that powers Wikipedia. This page explains why that choice was made, how the platform works, and what extensions enable the wiki's structured data capabilities.

Why MediaWiki

A landrace documentation project needs several things from its platform: the ability to store structured scientific data alongside long-form written content, collaborative editing by multiple contributors, version history for accountability, and long-term stability independent of any single commercial provider.

MediaWiki meets all of these requirements. It is free, open-source software maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation and a large developer community. It has been in continuous development since 2002 and powers some of the most heavily trafficked websites in the world. It is not going to disappear because a startup runs out of funding.

More specifically, MediaWiki's template and category systems provide the structural backbone for organising landrace data across the project's seven-level geographic hierarchy, while its native citation system (via the Cite extension) supports the rigorous sourcing standards the project requires.

Semantic MediaWiki

The most important extension on this platform is Semantic MediaWiki (SMW). Standard MediaWiki stores content as free text on pages. Semantic MediaWiki adds the ability to store structured data as properties attached to those pages, and to query that data across the entire wiki.

In practice, this means:

Every accession page stores machine-readable data (GPS coordinates, elevation, collection date, conservation status, collector, growing region, and so on) alongside its human-readable descriptions and photographs.
Country pages, growing region pages, and portal pages can automatically aggregate and display data from accession pages using semantic queries, without manual updating.
The Current Events news feed, the conservation status panels on the main page, and the accession counts on growing region pages are all generated dynamically from structured data rather than maintained by hand.

This approach means that when a new accession is added to the database with its properties correctly set, it automatically appears in the relevant region page, updates conservation statistics, and becomes discoverable through the wiki's query system. The data and the display stay in sync without editorial intervention.

PageForms

PageForms provides structured data entry forms that make it possible to add content without writing wiki markup directly. The news item submission form, for example, presents fields for date, category, headline, summary, location, and source URL. The form generates both the display template and the hidden semantic properties automatically, following the wiki's established architecture.

This lowers the barrier to contribution. A community member submitting a grow report or a news item does not need to understand MediaWiki syntax or Semantic MediaWiki property definitions. They fill in a form, and the system handles the rest.

Other Extensions

Extension	Function
Cite	Reference and footnote management
TemplateStyles	Scoped CSS for templates, enabling the card-based designs used on portal pages
Scribunto	Lua scripting support, used for the calendar widget on Portal:Current Events
DynamicPageList3	Advanced page listing and aggregation
CategoryTree	Hierarchical category navigation
VisualEditor	WYSIWYG editing for contributors unfamiliar with wiki markup

Technical Details

Component	Detail
MediaWiki version	1.44.0
Skin	Citizen
Hosting	A2 Hosting
Database	MySQL
Domain	landrace.wiki

For Contributors

You do not need to understand any of this to contribute to Landrace.Wiki. The contribution guidelines cover everything you need to get started, and the PageForms system handles structured data entry through simple web forms.

If you are technically inclined and want to help with template development, Lua modules, or CSS work, get in touch through the Zomia Collective website.