Presented at the "Between Ontologies and Floksonomies" (BOF) workshop at CCT2007

1. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Virtual Communities as Narrative Processes
Marco Benini and Federico Gobbo
{marco.benini, federico.gobbo}@uninsubria.it
Universit` degli Studi dell’Insubria
a
(cc) Some rights reserved.
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2. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Introduction
1
E-mail exchange
Shared repositories
Interactive content update technologies
New Texts
2
New what?
Communities as the result of narratives
Anatomy of Blogs
Anatomy of Wikis
From narratives to OWL
3
Natural language parsing for narratives
The model in OWL terms
How to use reflection in our model
Behind the Curtain
Concluding Remarks
4
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3. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
The Main Question we started from
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4. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
The Main Question we started from
What is the main limit
of current network-based
collaboration models?
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5. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
What are the current collaboration models, anyway?
According to Leuf and Cunningham (2002), there are three
models, historically determined:
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6. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
What are the current collaboration models, anyway?
According to Leuf and Cunningham (2002), there are three
models, historically determined:
e-mail exchange (including mailing lists);
1
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7. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
What are the current collaboration models, anyway?
According to Leuf and Cunningham (2002), there are three
models, historically determined:
e-mail exchange (including mailing lists);
1
shared repositories;
2
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8. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
What are the current collaboration models, anyway?
According to Leuf and Cunningham (2002), there are three
models, historically determined:
e-mail exchange (including mailing lists);
1
shared repositories;
2
interactive content update technologies.
3
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9. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
E-mail exchange
Perhaps the most used mailing list software ever used...
MAJORDOMO LICENSE AGREEMENT
Version 1.1
18 May 96
Great Circle Associates (GCA) is the original developer of Majordomo, a
package for managing Internet mailing lists. Since its initial release, many
organizations and individuals have contributed enhancements and fixes,
but the original copyright has been retained by Great Circle Associates.
Majordomo is distributed in source code form, with almost all modules
written in Perl (there is one small C program), and runs on many UNIX
platforms. Majordomo is not a supported product of Great Circle
Associates, but is made available for use on the following basis.
GCA grants you a license as follows to the Majordomo package:
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10. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
E-mail exchange
Their main service is to provide conferences
Discussion lists are organized in conferences, i.e. threads of
messages about a common topic.
Cross-posting is possible but discouraged as it is perceived as
unfair and unpolite.
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11. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
E-mail exchange
Their main service is to provide conferences
Discussion lists are organized in conferences, i.e. threads of
messages about a common topic.
Cross-posting is possible but discouraged as it is perceived as
unfair and unpolite.
Their paradigm is: “write once, read many”.
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12. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Shared repositories
From messaging to shared repositories
Along with the spread of the network and users as well, people
start to need file-sharing across posting.
Shared repositories were the first service to be developed, and
thereafter the aim was to give a complete support, so that the
community members were invited to use the Internet almost
exclusively through the community support.
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13. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Shared repositories
Mostly LMS are still used as shared repositories
Other features soon came: personal web pages, email address...
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14. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Interactive content update technologies
Interactive content update technologies, all-inclusive
Virtual communities, encouraging participation and active learning
among remote users, naturally prefer this third model, since their
members aim to establish social relations, and this goal is easier to
achieve if users are allowed to update content interactively.
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15. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Interactive content update technologies
Interactive content update technologies, all-inclusive
Virtual communities, encouraging participation and active learning
among remote users, naturally prefer this third model, since their
members aim to establish social relations, and this goal is easier to
achieve if users are allowed to update content interactively.
The aim behind these systems was to offer an all-inclusive
environment, in order to give a complete support to each
participant’s need, so that the community members were invited to
use the Internet almost exclusively through the community support.
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16. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Interactive content update technologies
The nightmare of adding unplanned features...
How can you forsee every participant’s need or desire in advance,
i.e. before the virtual community establishes itself?
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17. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Interactive content update technologies
The nightmare of adding unplanned features...
How can you forsee every participant’s need or desire in advance,
i.e. before the virtual community establishes itself?
It’s impossible! People expectations are usually very different and
unpredictable.
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18. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Interactive content update technologies
A first answer to our Main Question
Recall:
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19. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Interactive content update technologies
A first answer to our Main Question
Recall: what is the main limit of current network-based
collaboration models?
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20. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Interactive content update technologies
A first answer to our Main Question
Recall: what is the main limit of current network-based
collaboration models?
Our claim:
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21. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Interactive content update technologies
A first answer to our Main Question
Recall: what is the main limit of current network-based
collaboration models?
Our claim: community members’ wishes cannot be foreseen since
they arise after the community uses the software for enough time
to evolve itself, while the design of the software takes place before
the community starts to operate.
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22. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
‘New Texts’ overcomes some limits
In the 21th century, users’ awareness increased enough to a new
kind of community-oriented services, broadly called new texts.
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23. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
‘New Texts’ overcomes some limits
In the 21th century, users’ awareness increased enough to a new
kind of community-oriented services, broadly called new texts.
Wikis allow the collaborative development of knowledge.
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24. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
‘New Texts’ overcomes some limits
In the 21th century, users’ awareness increased enough to a new
kind of community-oriented services, broadly called new texts.
Wikis allow the collaborative development of knowledge.
while
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25. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
‘New Texts’ overcomes some limits
In the 21th century, users’ awareness increased enough to a new
kind of community-oriented services, broadly called new texts.
Wikis allow the collaborative development of knowledge.
while
Blogs acts as discussion vehicles.
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26. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
Why so popular? Aneddoctical evidences
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27. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
Why so popular? Aneddoctical evidences
It is very, very easy to add content by means of their markup
languages.
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28. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
Why so popular? Aneddoctical evidences
It is very, very easy to add content by means of their markup
languages.
The underlying hypertext is unstructured or semi-structured,
so that people can decide collectively how to organize their
content.
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29. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
Why so popular? Aneddoctical evidences
It is very, very easy to add content by means of their markup
languages.
The underlying hypertext is unstructured or semi-structured,
so that people can decide collectively how to organize their
content.
Last, not least, blogs and wikis allow and favour active
collaboration.
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30. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
The design and development of new texts is still traditional
Our point:
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31. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
The design and development of new texts is still traditional
Our point: the purpose of the software is just to support a living
community.
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32. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
The design and development of new texts is still traditional
Our point: the purpose of the software is just to support a living
community.
Therefore:
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33. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
New what?
The design and development of new texts is still traditional
Our point: the purpose of the software is just to support a living
community.
Therefore: a communityware should support a virtual community
from its start permitting its evolution with the social rules that
participants arbitrarily decide to adopt, according to the
community life. The social rules belong to the community, which
can modify them over time to reflect new needs and wishes.
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34. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Communities as the result of narratives
Virtual communities as narratives
We start by designing and constructing a language allowing the
writing of the community history.
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35. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Communities as the result of narratives
Virtual communities as narratives
We start by designing and constructing a language allowing the
writing of the community history.
Virtual communities are considered as narratives, i.e. the
community state(s) depicts the information owned by the
community in a language specifically constructed for this purpose.
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36. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Communities as the result of narratives
Virtual communities as narratives
We start by designing and constructing a language allowing the
writing of the community history.
Virtual communities are considered as narratives, i.e. the
community state(s) depicts the information owned by the
community in a language specifically constructed for this purpose.
The language itself is part of the state; since the state varies over
time, and the language is part of it, the language may evolve as
well.
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37. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Communities as the result of narratives
Narrative central notions
We had found three semantic atoms for our formalisation:
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38. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Communities as the result of narratives
Narrative central notions
We had found three semantic atoms for our formalisation:
User.
1
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39. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Communities as the result of narratives
Narrative central notions
We had found three semantic atoms for our formalisation:
User.
1
Message.
2
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40. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Communities as the result of narratives
Narrative central notions
We had found three semantic atoms for our formalisation:
User.
1
Message.
2
Conference.
3
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41. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Communities as the result of narratives
Users are actors and perform actions in the community
send
2
1
John a message
John is a User and he sends a Message...
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42. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Communities as the result of narratives
Messages are organised to form conferences
a conference another conference
a message a third message
a second a fourth
message message
John
...John’s Messages form conferences...
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43. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Communities as the result of narratives
Conferences and their history form the community tracking
community
a conference
language
another
rules
conference
...finally, conferences and their rules depict the community state,
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44. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Communities as the result of narratives
Conferences and their history form the community tracking
community
a conference
language
another
rules
conference
...finally, conferences and their rules depict the community state,
in the language defined insofar.
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45. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Anatomy of Blogs
The annotation model as a variant of the thread model
's blog 's blog
John Mario
post A post C
Monday
a comment
Tuesday post B
Wednesday a comment post D annotates B
Pietro Jack
The post is more important than the threaded answers.
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46. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Anatomy of Blogs
The annotation model as a variant of the thread model
's blog 's blog
John Mario
post A post C
Monday
a comment
Tuesday post B
Wednesday a comment post D annotates B
Pietro Jack
The post is more important than the threaded answers.
Blog’s paradigm: “write yours, read and comment the others”.
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47. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Anatomy of Wikis
Messages are organised to form conferences
a wiki
Monday edit E edit G
edit H
Tuesday
Wednesday edit F
John Jack Pietro Mario
Unlike blogs, wiki conference history becomes a sequence of
patches of differences between subsequent messages.
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48. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Anatomy of Wikis
Messages are organised to form conferences
a wiki
Monday edit E edit G
edit H
Tuesday
Wednesday edit F
John Jack Pietro Mario
Unlike blogs, wiki conference history becomes a sequence of
patches of differences between subsequent messages.
Wiki’s paradigm: “write anonymously and freely after careful
reading”.
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49. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Natural language parsing for narratives
The example before described in terms of a narrative
‘‘John is an user. John’s blog is a set of
conferences, owned by John. A comment is a message.
Only users may post messages.’’
The rules above describe the social actions possible within John’s
blog.
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50. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Natural language parsing for narratives
The example before described in terms of a narrative
‘‘John is an user. John’s blog is a set of
conferences, owned by John. A comment is a message.
Only users may post messages.’’
The rules above describe the social actions possible within John’s
blog.
Actions are composed by events that can be described in a
controlled subset of English. The parser will extract the
information for the formalisation in OWL (see below).
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51. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Natural language parsing for narratives
We follow Tesni`re’s structural grammars for parsing
e
send
2
1
John a message
The root is the verb. to send is a divalent verb. John is the first
actant (argument), a message the second actant.
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52. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Natural language parsing for narratives
The rules are stored in two OWL knowledge bases
The parser’s output is translated in OWL rules. Each community is
described in terms of a OWL ontology pair:
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53. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Natural language parsing for narratives
The rules are stored in two OWL knowledge bases
The parser’s output is translated in OWL rules. Each community is
described in terms of a OWL ontology pair:
history of the community;
1
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54. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Natural language parsing for narratives
The rules are stored in two OWL knowledge bases
The parser’s output is translated in OWL rules. Each community is
described in terms of a OWL ontology pair:
history of the community;
1
state of the community.
2
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55. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Natural language parsing for narratives
The rules are stored in two OWL knowledge bases
The parser’s output is translated in OWL rules. Each community is
described in terms of a OWL ontology pair:
history of the community;
1
state of the community.
2
Let’s see a minimal community in terms of pure OWL.
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56. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
The model in OWL terms
Our semantic atoms in the verbose OWL
<owl:Class rdf:ID=”Noun” />
<owl:Class rdf:ID=”User”>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=”#Noun” />
</owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID=”Message” />
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=”#Noun” />
</owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID=”Conference” />
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=”#Noun” />
</owl:Class>
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57. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
The model in OWL terms
The verb ‘read’ as an OWL property
<owl:Class rdf:ID=”Verb”>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=”&owl:ObjectProperty” />
</owl:Class>
<Verb rdf:ID=”read”>
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource=”#User” />
<rdfs:range>
<owl:unionOf rdf:parseType=”Collection”>
<owl:Class rdf:about=”#Message” />
<owl:Class rdf:about=”#Conference” />
</owl:unionOf>
</rdfs:range>
<vcs:action> ... </vcs:action>
</Verb>
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58. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
The model in OWL terms
Very briefly...
The verb domain is always a “User” and the range is either a
“Message” or a “Conference”. The virtual community structure
links the effect of the verb on the state of the community by means
of a program written in XML/XQuery (in the <vcs:action tag).
Messages always belong to Conferences.
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59. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
The model in OWL terms
Attributes as OWL datatype properties
They are useful to enrich the language
<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID=”title”>
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource=”#Message” />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource=”&xsd:string” />
</owl:DatatypeProperty>
<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID=”content”>
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource=”#Message” />
</owl:DatatypeProperty>
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID=”inConference”>
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource=”#Message” />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource=”#Conference” />
</owl:ObjectProperty>
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60. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
The model in OWL terms
‘Johns sends a message’ in OWL
<User rdf:ID=”John” />
<Conference rdf:ID=”JohnBlog” />
<Message rdf:ID=”msg1”>
<title> Post A </title>
<content rdf:resource=”http://www.dicom.uninsubria.it” />
<inConference rdf:resource=”#JohnBlog”/>
</Message>
<User rdf:about=”#John”>
<own rdf:resource=”#msg1” />
</User>
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61. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
The model in OWL terms
Evaluation
The narrative approach allows both to write the history of the
community, and to operate the core actions on the community
state.
Moreover, the language used to tale the events is defined as part of
the narration, like in mathematical textbooks, where the concepts
are first defined, and then used to derive results and to define new
notions.
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62. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
How to use reflection in our model
Reflection in action: Users become a Conference!
<Conference rdf:ID=”Users” />
<owl:Class rdf:about=”#User”>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=”#Message” />
<owl:equivalentClass>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource=”#inConference” />
<owl:allValuesFrom rdf:resource=”#Users” />
<owl:Restriction>
</owl:equivalentClass>
</owl:Class>
User management does not require new verbs or special actions:
this evolution was incrementally derived adding a new conference
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to an existing community.

63. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
How to use reflection in our model
An important remark about reflection
The reflective use of concepts is an example of evolution: in fact,
since the language may be modified at any time, potentially every
event involving a change in the language can be regarded as a step
toward the evolution of the community.
Through the definition of social rules in the controlled natural
language (English, by the moment, but maybe Italian or whatever)
users can decide the evolution of the community, as the rules are
coded directly in OWL!
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64. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Behind the Curtain
Behind the Curtain: the Engine
How the ideal communityware engine works?
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65. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Behind the Curtain
Behind the Curtain: the Engine
How the ideal communityware engine works?
the engine takes the event as an input form the web;
1
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66. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Behind the Curtain
Behind the Curtain: the Engine
How the ideal communityware engine works?
the engine takes the event as an input form the web;
1
the event plus the state becomes and OWL document;
2
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67. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Behind the Curtain
Behind the Curtain: the Engine
How the ideal communityware engine works?
the engine takes the event as an input form the web;
1
the event plus the state becomes and OWL document;
2
if such a doment is valid and sound, the action is performed
3
over the state;
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68. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Behind the Curtain
Behind the Curtain: the Engine
How the ideal communityware engine works?
the engine takes the event as an input form the web;
1
the event plus the state becomes and OWL document;
2
if such a doment is valid and sound, the action is performed
3
over the state;
the output becomes a (part of) the updated state.
4
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69. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Behind the Curtain
Behind the Curtain: the Engine
How the ideal communityware engine works?
the engine takes the event as an input form the web;
1
the event plus the state becomes and OWL document;
2
if such a doment is valid and sound, the action is performed
3
over the state;
the output becomes a (part of) the updated state.
4
Actions must be performed on the ontology state: each action is
defined by means of a function written in XML/XQuery.
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70. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
In practice, a more significant starting point is needed
The initial language should be non-empty and should represent a
well recognised language to describe a community model.
The narration of an example of community life requires a language
that can be usefully represented in the form of an OWL ontology.
This ontology becomes the foundational event of the community,
enabling its usage by means of the illustrated engine. Therefore,
the narrative description of communities becomes the enabling
metaphor that allows their representation in a semantic web
system.
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71. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
In this paper
What we presented:
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72. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
In this paper
What we presented:
a formalisation of narratives as a new possible design
1
approach of the communitywares;
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73. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
In this paper
What we presented:
a formalisation of narratives as a new possible design
1
approach of the communitywares;
the fact that semantic web technology is mature to permit a
2
significant encoding of virtual communities in OWL.
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74. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
In this paper
What we presented:
a formalisation of narratives as a new possible design
1
approach of the communitywares;
the fact that semantic web technology is mature to permit a
2
significant encoding of virtual communities in OWL.
What we still have to do:
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75. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
In this paper
What we presented:
a formalisation of narratives as a new possible design
1
approach of the communitywares;
the fact that semantic web technology is mature to permit a
2
significant encoding of virtual communities in OWL.
What we still have to do:
the implementation of the engine;
1
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76. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
In this paper
What we presented:
a formalisation of narratives as a new possible design
1
approach of the communitywares;
the fact that semantic web technology is mature to permit a
2
significant encoding of virtual communities in OWL.
What we still have to do:
the implementation of the engine;
1
the consequent collection of experimental data;
2
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77. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
In this paper
What we presented:
a formalisation of narratives as a new possible design
1
approach of the communitywares;
the fact that semantic web technology is mature to permit a
2
significant encoding of virtual communities in OWL.
What we still have to do:
the implementation of the engine;
1
the consequent collection of experimental data;
2
to what extent reflection can be used to simplify the
3
management of complex communities?
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78. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
In this paper
What we presented:
a formalisation of narratives as a new possible design
1
approach of the communitywares;
the fact that semantic web technology is mature to permit a
2
significant encoding of virtual communities in OWL.
What we still have to do:
the implementation of the engine;
1
the consequent collection of experimental data;
2
to what extent reflection can be used to simplify the
3
management of complex communities?
the study of the application of Creative Commons licenses as
4
specific social rules.
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79. Index Introduction New Texts From narratives to OWL Concluding Remarks
Thank you. Any questions?
Download these slides at the following permalink:
http://purl.org/net/fgobbo
(cc) M. Benini & F. Gobbo 2007. Attribuzione – Non commerciale – Condividi allo stesso modo 2.5
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