A Model for Open Semantic Hyperwikis

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 [6], these collections of interlinked documents have also gained a dual role as ad-hoc RDF [7] graphs. However, their roots lie in the limited hypertext capabilities of the World Wide Web [1]: 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.[3] 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 similiar 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.