NEPOMUK D1.1 - Interactive Semantic Wikis

NEPOMUK D1.1 - Interactive Semantic Wikis

Executive summary

Knowledge articulation, both individual and collaborative, is an integral part of a social semantic desktop. In Nepomuk, this articulation is mediated by a semantic wiki developed in the course of the project and integrated with the Nepomuk platform.

Wikis have simplified authoring and sharing of unstructured content. Semantic wikis aim at semantically annotating wiki content and deriving benefits from this annotation. The challenge is to improve information retrieval and management without sacrificing the trademark wiki flexibility and ease of use.

We have analyzed the state-of-the-art of both traditional wikis and semantic wiki prototypes in order to identify successful design solutions and popularity factors (Chapter 2). Wherever possible, the results have been applied in the ongoing development of the three Nepomuk wiki prototypes (described in Chapter 3). The links to test the prototypes are provided in the Appendix.

Just as there are many traditional wiki engines, several approaches are possible to building semantic wikis. However, semantics offers new opportunities for communication between different wiki engines. We have developed proposals and prototypes of semantics-based and other integration methods (Chapter 4).

Language analysis algorithms can greatly simplify formal content annotation, although they often require human input to reduce error. Some of the Nepomuk wiki prototypes rpovide features for an effective human-computer cooperation in content structuring (Chapter 5).

We have evaluated the Nepomuk semantic wiki prototypes based on the requirements derived in the four Nepomuk case studies (Chapter 6). We have found that the prototypes already satisfy several important requirements, although much still remains to be done.

Based on the gathered information, a roadmap for the subsequent Nepomuk semantic wiki development has been determined (Chapter 7).