Semantic Wiki State of The Art Paper

Meta

• This paper was born at ISWC2005.
• The topic is Semantic Wiki State of The Art
• Target: International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems. http://www.idea-group.com/downloads/images/Semantic%20Webthumb1.jpg
  • Maybe you would also like to consider the Journal of Web Semantics by the Elsevier group. --Denny 20:21, 29 November 2005 (CET)

Who works on the paper:

• Max Völkel,
• Malte Kiesel,
• Sebastian Schaffert,
• Björn Decker and
• Eyal Oren

Paper in Progress

1. Introduction

why this paper?

• Wikis allow easy, ad hoc, collaborative content creating
• Section on / Ref on Why Wikis Work

Daniel Schwabe See http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WhyWikiWorks. Actually, lots of useful references there, including this one about Wiki Life Cycle

Relation to visions / ontology usage

• Peter Mikas / XX Akkermans survey on Ontolgy use in KM --> Are we using Wikis to communicate?, integrate or to reason about knowledge
• Semantic Web Layer Cake: Where does it belong

Sebastian, some "Textbausteine":

Although the Semantic Web is recently gaining significant attention from both academia and industry, the amount of knowledge available in some formal representation that is accessible by machines is still small compared to the “traditional” Web. A major reason for this is that Semantic Web technologies and tools require considerable expertise in logics and programming, and are thus not well suited for users outside the field of computer science. Also, knowledge engineering tools for the Semantic Web are currently mostly single user and do not support well the collaborative creation of formal knowledge. This makes it hard for domain experts and knowledge engineers to work together on a knowledge engineering task. What is needed are thus collaborative tools and methodologies that hide the underlying complexity of the technology from the user, and support the process of knowledge creation from informal text to formal, machine processable knowledge like ontologies.

2. Basics

What are wikis? Common features (see also Standard_Wiki_Features): Which feature? What is it good for? Why is it important? For whom is it important?

--> The standard wiki features

• editing via a web browser
• editing without login
• editing via wiki syntax
  • MichelBuffa : hmmm, I'm not sure this is what make a wiki a wiki. New wikis like JotSpot, and old wikis like twiki, SocialText wiki etc... tends to go wysiwyg. The wiki we are working on is 100% wysiwyg, no more markup langage. Malte: I second, see old discussion on swikig and link on Standard Wiki Features.
• easy and deep linking via names
• can link to not-yet-existing pages
• no authorship for content stated
• versioning, easy to revert changes
• diff function
• Daniel Schwabe Standard default rendering - the user sees "something", no matter what was entered as the page contents. Although there is some markup, the focus is on providing content over "making things look nice". Therefore, the user can just type the contents, and the wiki engine will show it, even if not so nicely formatted.
• ....
• Iterative Learning, learning by example (Daniel Schwabe I think this is more a side effect than a standard feature]]
• BD: NAMESPACES ( Just kiddin', insider joke)

Malte: I'd suggest to provide both abstract goals/design guidelines (as done on c2.com, see Standard_Wiki_Features) and features. Semantic wiki features should be listened separately, emphasizing their relationship to the general guidelines if possible.

BD: How about the following summary (Taken from the SWESE paper:

From the authors’ point of view, these basic features are: one place publishing, meaning that there is only one version of a document available that is regarded as the current version; simple and safe collaboration refers to versioning and locking mechanisms that most Wikis provide; easy linking means that documents within a Wiki can be linked by their title using a Self-organized Reuse of Software Engineering Knowledge Supported by Semantic Wikis 3 si

I tried to look for the page why wiki works on c2, but I was not able to find it - also in the book by Bo Leuaf and Ward Cummingham!

What are they used for? Examples?

Regular Wikis

• open source software documentation -> jakarta
• as bug tracking system -> trac
• as encyclopedia -> Wikipedia
• personal knowledge management -> Max uses it. Actually, this might be interesting: Who is using a Wiki As PIM?
• company intranets/discussion platforms (see http://twiki.org/ "Success Stories)

Semantic Wikis

• Requirements Engineering --> Rise
• Process Descriptions --> Future plans (although very concrete!)
• Daniel Schwabe Teaching support - LOTS of usecases on this!
• ...

Sebastian: Many further ideas summarised here.

Sebastian, some "Textbausteine":

The Wiki Idea For the "traditional" Web, so-called "wiki" systems have been very successful in enabling non-technical users to create Web content. A wiki (Hawaiian: "quick", "fast") is essentially a collection of Web pages that allows users to add content via a browser interface. Content is usually expressed in a simplified hypertext format ("wiki syntax") that is much easier for humans than HTML. Anyone can change anything in a wiki – often completely unrestricted. Collaborative knowledge creation is thus a central aspect of a wiki system. Wiki pages are accessible and usable at any time, and the content constantly evolves. Unlike other groupware or content/knowledge management tools, a wiki system gives users almost complete freedom over the content development process without rigid workflows, access restrictions, or predefined structures. Users need not adapt their practice to the “dictate of the system” but can allow their own practice to define the structure. This is important because different domains often have or even require different kinds of workflow. Wiki systems are nowadays used for a wide variety of purposes:

• encyclopaedia systems: collect knowledge in a certain area (e.g. Wikitravel) or unrestricted (e.g. Wikipedia) in a community effort with contributions from a wide range of users
• software development: collaboratively author documentation, collect ideas, bug tracking (according to a recent study [TODO: find study] [Alternative: Just have a look at apache. I think all projects have one], more than 50% of Open Source projects use a wiki for coordination)
• project knowledge management: brainstorming and exchange of ideas, coordination of activities, coordination and records of meetings, notepad for common information items
• personal knowledge management: sketchpad to collect and elaborate personal ideas, addresses, dates, tasks, bookmarks, etc.

3. Common Features of Semantic Wikis

see also:

• SwikiSOTA StandardWikiFeatures
• http://www.wikimatrix.org/index.php

Which feature? What is it good for? Why is it important? For whom is it important?

Daniel Schwabe This is where a meta-model could be useful - by comparing different meta-models, it is possible to discuss more clearly how semantics are incorporated into a "regular" wiki.

• Formalization
  • Are semantics (triples/whatever) separated from or included in the wiki markup?
  • Is the end user supported when formalizing content/adding annotations in some way? autocompletion/proposal generation/schema or consistency checking
  • What representation language is used? (RDF/OWL/...)
  • Is there versioning support for the formalized content? [BD: For the content (like in any other wiki, or for the metadata (trivial, if included in the page or for the ontology "behind" the wiki]
  • Is there provenance (Herkunft) support for the formalized content? (get formalized contents/triples tagged with its author?)
• What things can get formalized?
  • Is there support for typing pages/category system/page tagging?
  • Is there support for typing links?
  • How are source, property an target determined (e.g. in Platypus, the source is always the current page)
• What ontology support does the wiki provide?
  • Is there support for loading/saving ontologies?
  • Can ontologies be created/changed from within the wiki?
  • Is there any reasoning support? Using what engine?
    • What kind of (e.g. inverse properties are taken into account, check for consistency)
  • Is the instance data required to comply with the ontologies?
• How can semantic information be exploited?
  • Is there simple querying support? (search for all triples with a certain subject, predicate, object)
  • Is there advanced querying support? (free, complex queries) Is there any real user interface for expressing advanced queries?
  • Is there any special visualization?
  • Is there any way to render pages from formalized content? [BD: Did not undersand this. Please provide example!]

Björn Decker: Please help me to use the right terms here for the ones mentioned in "". I am only a software engineer, so I might not use the right one for this Journal!

Björn Decker: We could use our online survey tool (Global Parc) for this - but NOT IN TWO WEEKS!!!! Furthermore, we might use the OpenBRR classification to evaluate those Wikis. A Student Worker is currently investigating whether it fits or not!

Sebastian, some "Textbausteine":

Semantic Wikis Arguably, wikis have changed the way content is authored on the Web. In a sense, they have helped to realise the vision of the “traditional Web” by allowing to freely share information and allowing everyone to participate. This leads to the question of whether “semantic wikis” could help realise the “Semantic Web” in the same way. Possible advantages of semantic wikis include:

• lowering the technical barrier for non-technical users by hiding (to some extent) the complexi