A Study of Ontology Convergence in a Semantic Wiki

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Description/Abstract

Semantic Wikis propose a combination of both easy collaboration and semantic expressivity; characteristics of the WikiWikiWeb and the Semantic Web respectively. In this paper we look to define and analyse the Semantic Wiki method, in order to explore the effect of different Semantic Wiki characteristics on the quality of the semantic networks authored within them. We look at a number of different Semantic Wiki implementations, including their semantic expressivity and usability. We focus on support for ontology creation, and perform an evaluation on the effect of type suggestion tools on ontology convergence within a seeded and unseeded Wiki (using Semantic MediaWiki and our own MOCA extension). We find that seeding a Wiki with typed pages and links has a strong effect on the quality of the emerging structure and that convergence tools have the potential to replicate that effect with an unseeded Wiki, but that they have limited impact on the reuse of elements from the evolving ontology.