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A Model for Open Semantic Hyperwikis

A Model for Open Semantic Hyperwikis
A Model for Open Semantic Hyperwikis
Wiki systems have developed over the past years as lightweight, community-editable, web-based hypertext systems. With the emergence of semantic wikis such as Semantic MediaWiki, these collections of interlinked documents have also gained a dual role as ad-hoc RDF graphs. However, their roots lie in the limited hypertext capabilities of the World Wide Web: embedded links, without support for features like composite objects or transclusion. Collaborative editing on wikis has been hampered by redundancy; much of the effort spent on Wikipedia is used keeping content synchronised and organised. We have developed a model for a system, which we have prototyped and are evaluating, which reintroduces ideas from the field of hypertext to help alleviate this burden. In this paper, we present a model for what we term an 'open semantic hyperwiki' system, drawing from both past hypermedia models, and the informal model of modern semantic wiki systems. An 'open semantic hyperwiki' is a reformulation of the popular semantic wiki technology in terms of the long-standing field of hypermedia, which then highlights and resolves the omissions of hypermedia technology made by the World Wide Web and the applications built around its ideas. In particular, our model supports first-class linking, where links are managed separately from nodes. This is then enhanced by the system's ability to embed links into other nodes and separate them out again, allowing for a user editing experience similar to HTML-style embedded links, while still gaining the advantages of separate links. We add to this transclusion, which allows for content sharing by including the content of one node into another, and edit-time transclusion, which allows users to edit pages containing shared content without the need to follow a sequence of indirections to find the actual text they wish to modify. Our model supports more advanced linking mechanisms, such as generic links, which allow words in the wiki to be used as link endpoints. The development of this model has been driven by our prior experimental work on the limitations of existing wikis and user interaction. We have produced a prototype implementation which provides first-class links, transclusion, and generic links.
Open Hypermedia, Semantic Web, Wiki
978-3-642-16580-1
1-14
Springer
Boulain, Philip
2a1408de-6c3b-4370-a36d-d1e6f1936f8e
Shadbolt, Nigel
5c5acdf4-ad42-49b6-81fe-e9db58c2caf7
Gibbins, Nicholas
98efd447-4aa7-411c-86d1-955a612eceac
Breslin, John G.
Burg, Thomas N.
Kim, Hong-Gee
Raftery, Tom
Schmidt, Jan-Hinrik
Boulain, Philip
2a1408de-6c3b-4370-a36d-d1e6f1936f8e
Shadbolt, Nigel
5c5acdf4-ad42-49b6-81fe-e9db58c2caf7
Gibbins, Nicholas
98efd447-4aa7-411c-86d1-955a612eceac
Breslin, John G.
Burg, Thomas N.
Kim, Hong-Gee
Raftery, Tom
Schmidt, Jan-Hinrik

Boulain, Philip, Shadbolt, Nigel and Gibbins, Nicholas (2010) A Model for Open Semantic Hyperwikis. In, Breslin, John G., Burg, Thomas N., Kim, Hong-Gee, Raftery, Tom and Schmidt, Jan-Hinrik (eds.) Recent Trends and Developments in Social Software. Springer, pp. 1-14.

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

Wiki systems have developed over the past years as lightweight, community-editable, web-based hypertext systems. With the emergence of semantic wikis such as Semantic MediaWiki, these collections of interlinked documents have also gained a dual role as ad-hoc RDF graphs. However, their roots lie in the limited hypertext capabilities of the World Wide Web: embedded links, without support for features like composite objects or transclusion. Collaborative editing on wikis has been hampered by redundancy; much of the effort spent on Wikipedia is used keeping content synchronised and organised. We have developed a model for a system, which we have prototyped and are evaluating, which reintroduces ideas from the field of hypertext to help alleviate this burden. In this paper, we present a model for what we term an 'open semantic hyperwiki' system, drawing from both past hypermedia models, and the informal model of modern semantic wiki systems. An 'open semantic hyperwiki' is a reformulation of the popular semantic wiki technology in terms of the long-standing field of hypermedia, which then highlights and resolves the omissions of hypermedia technology made by the World Wide Web and the applications built around its ideas. In particular, our model supports first-class linking, where links are managed separately from nodes. This is then enhanced by the system's ability to embed links into other nodes and separate them out again, allowing for a user editing experience similar to HTML-style embedded links, while still gaining the advantages of separate links. We add to this transclusion, which allows for content sharing by including the content of one node into another, and edit-time transclusion, which allows users to edit pages containing shared content without the need to follow a sequence of indirections to find the actual text they wish to modify. Our model supports more advanced linking mechanisms, such as generic links, which allow words in the wiki to be used as link endpoints. The development of this model has been driven by our prior experimental work on the limitations of existing wikis and user interaction. We have produced a prototype implementation which provides first-class links, transclusion, and generic links.

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More information

Published date: 2010
Additional Information: Chapter: 1
Keywords: Open Hypermedia, Semantic Web, Wiki
Organisations: Web & Internet Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 271703
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/271703
ISBN: 978-3-642-16580-1
PURE UUID: 7f854132-a225-402f-8daa-f51ade4fa4aa
ORCID for Nicholas Gibbins: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6140-9956

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 24 Nov 2010 17:45
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:59

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Contributors

Author: Philip Boulain
Author: Nigel Shadbolt
Author: Nicholas Gibbins ORCID iD
Editor: John G. Breslin
Editor: Thomas N. Burg
Editor: Hong-Gee Kim
Editor: Tom Raftery
Editor: Jan-Hinrik Schmidt

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