Thursday, November 6, 2008

Semantic MediaWiki and Referata

As I discussed in my last post on Semantic Wikis, I've identified several good semantic wiki software applications. After reviewing them in more depth, I decided to try Semantic MediaWiki first because: 1) it's an extension of MediaWiki, the software behind Wikipedia (which I really like), 2) it seems very stable and well-supported, and 3) I can get a free hosted Semantic MediaWiki site at referata.com.

My intention is to evaluate this software as part of a larger project to develop a new user centered methodology for knowledge engineering of artificial intelligence systems. The process is still evolving but my loose concept of it contains roughly the following steps executed in a spiral model.

  1. Develop a human-readable knowledge base for the domain that looks something like Wikipedia, but constrained to a particular domain and scope. This serves the purposes of: a) requirements analysis, b) developing a controlled vocabulary, and c) can serve as explanatory and/or training material for users of the new system. Keep track of references and where multiple sources disagree.
  2. Take a first pass over the human-readable knowledge base to begin to identify the elements that would be important to a software system. Important nouns often become classes (in the computer science or ontology senses of the word). For each of these classes, you're looking for the important properties, relationships, rules and constraints. Ideally, all of this information can be captured back into the knowledge base in a form that can be read by both humans and computers.
  3. Use the knowledge base to drive some type of simulation that can be viewed and verified by subject matter experts. This shows that the computer has correctly understood and can generalize the information. Ideally, you maintain the link between the simulation and the knowledge base so that the computer can use the knowledge base to justify and/or explain its results.
So far, I've gotten started on step #1 above in the domain of "Youth Soccer." You can view the ongoing development at http://soccer.referata.com. I'm just starting to look at step #2. The results of that effort will be posted in a later blog.

See you next time!

-Keith

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