Boosting Collaborative Technology

The semantic enhancement of Wiki-technology is a major step forward towards the realization of collaborative semantic web infrastructures. Implementations such as the semantic extension of the well-known MediaWiki (Semantic MediaWiki – SMW) enable communities to create, share and evaluate semantic annotations. The semantic enrichment support structured queries in addition to fulltext-search, thus helping users to establish “readable knowledge bases”.

Earlier versions of the SMW-extension suffered from a number of usability issues and a limited technical support for important tasks like visualizing, analyzing and cleaning the underlying ontologies. Those features are crucial in terms of minimal ontological commitment and the agreement on a common model.

The goal in the context of the project HALO was to establish Semantic MediaWiki as an easy-to-use platform for domain experts and benefit from its advantages, such as the scalability, the availability as open-source software and the popularity of the underlying platform. To overcome the limitations mentioned above, we focused on two aspects: the elimination of “productivity bottlenecks” through user-interface enhancements and the systematic support of model cleaning (so called “gardening”).

Following a user-centred design approach we were able to gather immediate feedback from a group of subject-matter experts throughout the development process. Evaluations of the various Semantic MediaWiki extensions including the analysis of a dedicated “verification-Wiki” have proven the success of this approach.

You can find a online demonstration of SMW+ at http://smwdemo.ontoprise.com.

Learn more about SMW+ on the SMW+ product homepage: http://wiki.ontoprise.de.

Website Vulcan Inc.:

www.vulcan.com

Learn more about SMW+ on the SMW+ product homepage:

http://wiki.ontoprise.de

Get your copy of SMW+ in the SMW+ online shop:

http://shop.ontoprise.com

Visit the lively SMW+ user community:

http://smwforum.ontoprise.com

News:

Ontoprise is selected as prime contractor by Vulcan Inc. ...

Product:

Semantic MediaWiki+