Article ID: | iaor200970284 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 7 |
Issue: | 3 |
Start Page Number: | 206 |
End Page Number: | 217 |
Publication Date: | Sep 2009 |
Journal: | Knowledge Management Research & Practice |
Authors: | Guo Tao, Burstein Frada, Schwartz David G, Linger Henry |
Keywords: | internet |
In the context of knowledge management, ontology construction can be considered as a part of capturing of the body of knowledge of a particular problem domain. Traditionally, ontology construction assumes a tedious codification of the domain experts knowledge. In this paper, we describe a new approach to ontology engineering that has the potential of bridging the dichotomy between codification and collaboration turning to Web 2.0 technology. We propose to shift the primary source of ontology knowledge from the expert to socially emergent bodies of knowledge such as Wikipedia. Using Wikipedia as an example, we demonstrate how core terms and relationships of a domain ontology can be distilled from this socially constructed source. As an illustration, we describe how our approach achieved over 90% conceptual coverage compared with Gold standard hand-crafted ontologies, such as Cyc. What emerges is not a folksonomy, but rather a formal ontology that has nonetheless found its roots in social knowledge.