DC 2010 Artist paper

Title

Metadata for semantic wikis networks

Abstract

bla bla bla

Introducing Wicri

Wicri, a network of wikis for research and innovation

Wicri network has been created in the framework of Mission Ticri (Technologies dealing with Information and Communication for Communities involved in Research and Innovation). This initiative was launched by the Lorraine representative of Ministry in charge of research and innovation affairs. Ticri aims at disseminating main results of research communities in order to promote partnership between innovation actors, to encourage outreach, and to develop technology transfers in a multidisciplinary context.

Wikipedia has demonstrated the interest of the wiki approach to build and disseminate a common knowledge in a very large scale. Thus Wikipedia brings us a first answer (and we are using this media) but it is not sufficient to bring us a global response. A main point is that Wikipedia's contributors must produce information that is attested by references. Authors can be anonymous as far as their bibliographic references are significant and links to explicitly named people. But now, when we deals with research fields, the academic communities is making the knowledge that Wikipedia could use. In many cases, knowledge is in progress and many assumptions appear to be hypothesis. For these reasons we think that the authors must be clearly known; thus anonymous contributions are forbidden.

As a result, such a wiki infrastructure must be driven by institutionnal entities in order to manage registration processes. Thus the institutions must find an advantage in investing in wiki approach and visibility becomes a strong parameter. The network approach allows each partner to promote its own wiki site, and its own visibility.

In a first step, we have build a little demonstrator with several institutional wikis. The limits have appeared quite immediatly: if several organizations are working on the same topic, this topic must be developped on a thematic wiki. Thus we have quickly introduce several wikis on thematic or regional design.

The demonstrator was operated by a little team, mainly 3 people, in the same office. As soon as we were more than one, we have met quite immediatly several coherency problems and introduced a an effective carrying of metadata.

The current Wicri network

The wiki network accepts two main types of wikis.

• Institutional wikis are handled by an organization. In this paper we will use a naming scheme with two parts : region then sigle. For instance Lorraine/sge for the research cluster SGE (Science et Génie de l'Environnement) in Lorraine area.
• Common wikis are design by the global Wicri Community. They can be managed by an organization but they fully share the common rules and are moderared by independant and scientific committes. In this paper we use a naming scheme with Wicri as first part, like in Wicri/Lorraine.

• institutionnal wikis - i.e. laboratory, university, cluster...
• common wikis:
  • generic:
    • Wicri (family fr/en) gives a global view of the network. All topics appear in this wiki.
    • WicriMedia: pool of images - will be completed by repositories for pdf...
    • WicriBase: templates, vocabularies, metadata support
  • Thematic:
    • Ticri - includes a DCMI portal
    • Dealing with environment: Water, Urban soils
  • Regional:
    • Lorraine

Network coherency versus contenus différenciés

A given information will be processed on different wikis. For instance the city of Pittsburgh appear at least on 3 wikis. On Wicri/Ticri, Pittsburgh is directly connected to DC 2010 and the corresponding page speaks about main activities related to information science in this area. On Wicri/Water, we describe the confluence of Allegheny and Monongahela rivers for giving the source of Ohio. On Wicri/Wicri, we talk about general facts about this city and introduced commented links on the other pages.

Issues about networks of semantic wikis

In this section we will introduce a discussion about what technical choices have been done in the design of Wicri.

Semantic wikis for scientific objects

The Wicri project is not a research one, but a demontrator which must become an operationnel application. In a first step, be fully compatible with Wikipedia seems to be a pragmatic option. So, we have choosen to start with MediaWiki. This CMS is used by Wikipedia and is becoming very popular. It supports many extensions for carrying scientific data (for instance LaTeX) and for semantic purposes.

• • handling of scientific et technical data (TeX)
• Semantic MediaWiki

peer-to-peer

Samples :

• peer-to-peer networks
• DCMI set of wikis