A web-based user interaction framework for collaboratively building and validating ontologies

ABSTRACT

Collaborative ontology building requires innovative navigational instruments that improve content exploration and the creation of shared meaning. Building upon an existing architecture for automated ontology learning from unstructured textual resources developed by the authors, this paper presents a Web-based user interaction framework encompassing three major components: (i) real-time visualizations of ontology evolution with time interval and confidence sliders, (ii) traditional ontology editing environments, and (iii) multi-player online games leveraging social networking platforms in the tradition of games with a purpose. A prototype in the environmental domain will showcase the integration of powerful search capabilities with novel graphbased interfaces for guiding novice and expert users alike.

REFERENCES

• 1: Luis von Ahn, Games with a Purpose, Computer, v.39 n.6, p.92-94, June 2006 [doi>10.1109/MC.2006.196]
• 2: Liu, W., Weichselbraun, A., Scharl, A. and Chang, E. (2005). "Semi-Automatic Ontology Extension Using Spreading Activation", Journal of Universal Knowledge Management, 0(1): 50--58.
• 3: MacQueen, J. (1964). "Optimal Policies for a Class of Search and Evaluation Problems", Management Science, 10(4): 746--759.
• 4: Reingold, E. M., Charness, N., Schultetus, R. S. and Stampe, D. M. (2001). "Perceptual Automaticity in Expert Chess Players: Parallel Encoding of Chess Relations", Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(3): 504--510.
• 5: Scharl, A. (2007). "Towards the Geospatial Web: Media Platforms for Managing Geotagged Knowledge Repositories", The Geospatial Web - How Geobrowsers, Social Software and the Web 2.0 are Shaping the Network Society. Eds. A. Scharl and K. Tochtermann. London: Springer. 3--14.
• 6: Toby Segaran, Programming collective intelligence, O'Reilly, 2007
• 7: Katharina Siorpaes , Martin Hepp, Games with a Purpose for the Semantic Web, IEEE Intelligent Systems, v.23 n.3, p.50-60, May 2008 [doi>10.1109/MIS.2008.45]
• 8: James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, Anchor, 2005
• 9: Weichselbraun, A. (2008). Strategies for Optimizing Querying 3rd Party Resources in Semantic Web Applications. 3rd Int'l Conference on Software & Data Technologies. Ed. J. Cordeiro et al. Porto, Portugal: 111--118.
• 10: Albert Weichselbraun , Arno Scharl , Wei Liu, Capturing and Classifying Ontology Evolution in News Media Archives, Proceedings of the 2008 19th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Application, p.197-201, September 01-05, 2008 [doi>10.1109/DEXA.2008.126]
• 11: Graphviz. http://www.graphviz.org/.
• 12: Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/.
• 13: IDIOM Research Project. http://www.idiom.at/.
• 14: Media Watch on Climate Change. http://www.ecoresearch.net/climate/.
• 15: NASA World Wind. http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/.
• 16: OntoWiki. http://ontowiki.net/Projects/OntoWiki/.
• 17: Protégé. http://protege.stanford.edu/.
• 18: US08 Sentiment Quiz. http://www.ecoresearch.net/election2008/facebook/

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.3 Information Search and Retrieval
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces

Keywords:
collaborative editing, games with a purpose, graph visualization, ontology engineering, social networking platforms, tightly-coupled interfaces