Semantic Wiki Birds-of-a-Feather Meeting

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Submitted by Lange, Christoph on Fri, 2008/10/17 - 16:46.
2008/10/26 - 18:00
2008/10/26 - 23:00
Etc/GMT+1

As an inofficial side event to the International Semantic Web Conference there will be a meeting of the Semantic Wiki community with lightning talks, system or site demos, and a discussion of research directions and applications. The event has its own homepage, but is supported by JEM and relevant for JEM.

Summary

(see the event homepage for more details)

  • lightning talks about hot topics related to semantic wikis
  • system or site demos: didn't take place for lack of time
  • open discussion about future research directions and applications: was very productive, with good input as a preparation for the proposal for the 4th Semantic Wiki Workshop. Here is a summary of the research directions from a JEM point of view; see the event homepage for the actual summary:
    • What is the essence of a (semantic) wiki: collaboration, easy editing and linking, easy undo (thanks to versioning)
    • Semantic wikis support a transition from informal to formal data. This is interesting in the domain of mathematics, which has a wide range of formality degrees.
    • Users can change the schema of the application at runtime. If the users are a community of learners, that means that they can adapt the presentation and structure of the learning material in the wiki to their needs.
    • Challenge: Give people value (reward, incentives) for the annotations they make. In education, too, we don't always have the separation of tasks where a teacher or author is paid for providing content, and scholars just consume. If we want user-generated content, users must get something in return for their contributions.
    • Semantic wikis have a strong community; build on that. Don't be ashamed of a workshop titled "semantic wiki"; we can make a strong workshop proposal.
    • Semantic MediaWiki with all of its extensions is the most widely used semantic wiki and would almost deserve its own workshop. So far there is no extension that is particularly suited for mathematics or for education, but maybe somebody would like to develop it?
    • Semantic wikis need not be hard to use. Consider Chickipedia as a Semantic MediaWiki instance that does not at all look like Semantic MediaWiki. (Note: This may not be suitable for minors.)
  • get-together of the semantic wiki community: took place at Vogelbräu
Background information for the JEM community

Semantic wikis are wikis that use semantic web technologies like

  • ontology-based knowledge representation
  • dynamic querying, automated reasoning and knowledge inference

in order to offer knowledge-based services. Thus, they can also empower education. Relevant background information within the JEM community:

Relevant external resources: