Re: [dao-forum] PurpleWiki as an ontology editor

[Kenneth Fields <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The good thing about Wikis (and blogs) is that they start off as blank pages. An Ontology group as well as a Mickey Mouse fan club can both use one. What happens after they begin to be used in the field is the interesting thing - they begin to define a specialized discourse. 

I don't think a Wiki need be tailored toward ontology making - rather there needs to be a wiki discourse harvester. Wikis should cooperate on this level - by making their vocabularies (rules) available when a pull (OntoRequest) is received from an OntoAgent at GoogleOntologyServices :). I'm counting on your guys to tell me this exists already.

WikiLanguage is like the GermanLanguage, the words can be strung together. Like Nooron suggests, the words should be kept separate (granular) so as to allow this fertile cross-breeding of concepts. For example I can put WikiBlog together and a new industry is born. But Wiki and Blog still exist atomically. I can make define a MikiWiki or MikiGoogleOntology (compressed as MGO). All theses things are happening with language - WikiWords and acronyms. The important thing for the ontology community, is that there be a central repository / dictionary, so when I update my Miki page in my separate-isolated collaborative work environment all the other Wikis containing the class Miki are aware of it - and the change in my Miki effects your MikiWiki as well as StickyMiki.

Ontolog and DAO are on the same server, but there is still a gulf - even though community.cim3 is a place for us to meet. There needs to be (will be) more collaboration (coordination) between collaborative work environments - as blueOxen and Eekim are well aware of (collaborationCollaboratory). 

Ontology definitely benefits from rich discourse and Wikis certainly promote that (and continue to refine the process all the time) - as they continue to output their .rdf, or rich discourse format, or rich ontology format (.rof) or OKBC if that works. 

Anyway, I see two goals for the DAO project: one is to harvest digital arts discourse while documenting and organizing it (ontology). A parallel course is to discuss (semi)automation of the process. So we have two paths to take -  both are good. While each of those discourses are themselves mine-able discourses. How can we make the forum part of the CWE more mine-able and documentable on the Wiki. The purple numbers help! But its not the total answer. Point me to where this already exists :). 

Ken.


On Jan 30, 2004, at 2:34 PM, Eugene Eric Kim wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 10:12:35PM -0800, Kenneth Fields wrote:
>
> > .... to turn a wiki into an ontology authoring tool maybe.
> > Seems natural. NewClass simply makes a new class
> > in your ontology. We need a quick open methodology for
> > going to a site with your new hot idea and inputing your class
> > and properties in two seconds. If it could be done from
> > your cell  phone - all the better :). RSS feed must inform
> > the ontology community that the ontology has been updated,
> > while 9 or 10 'votes' will  confirm that class as validated.
>
> Check out Nooron, which seems to be what you're describing:
>
> http://www.nooron.org/
>
> Shawn Murphy, Nooron's creator, incorporated Wiki elements in order to
> make it easy to edit ontologies.  Nooron uses OKBC on the backend.
>
> Can PurpleWiki be modified to be an ontology editing tool?  My guess
> is yes, but the truth is that I'm not sure.  Or, more accurately, I'm
> not sure if it's worth it.
>
> I think that Wikis already come close to mapping to a Topic Map model,
> as I explain at:
>
> http://www.eekim.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikisAsTopicMaps
>
> However, there is some debate as to whether or not Topic Maps are rich
> enough to express "true" ontologies.  (There's been some recent
> discussion about this very topic on Peter's ontolog mailing list.)
>
> If we take a hardline view on this and say that it is not, then the
> question stands: What do we need to do to PurpleWiki (or any Wiki for
> that matter) to use it for editing ontologies?  And is it worth it?
>
> I personally would like PurpleWiki to become rich enough to express
> Topic Maps, but I'm not keen on evolving it to compete with Protege.
> I just don't see the value, but perhaps that's because I'm not in the
> business of constructing formal ontologies.  I'd certainly like to
> hear opinions to the contrary, however, and people are also welcome to
> show the value of doing this by actually doing it.  That's the beauty
> of open source.
>
> -Eugene
>
> -- 
> Was I helpful?  Let others know.
>
> http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=eekim&p=EnablingOnlineCommunities
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