Abstract

The specific knowledge-based technology that we are developing is Purple MediaWiki (PMWX), an extension of MediaWiki that supports fine-grained addressability of a knowledge repository. Unlike other web pages, content on a wiki is the result of a collaboration among the users of the wiki. As a result, the content on a wiki changes more frequently than most web pages. As more and more people add content to a web page and then refer to that content, it becomes important to pinpoint the location of the data for future reference or to provide a reference to someone else. The bookmarking option in a web browser allows one to bookmark the URL, but if this URL is the page as a whole it may be difficult for a user to locate the intended content when the amount of content on the page is large. With PMWX, each unit of an article (which may be as small as a single entry in a table) can be individually annotated and discussed by several individuals in a coherent fashion that allows the community to naturally break out into interest groups that can concurrently focus on aspects of concern to the community without losing overall participation by the entire community. The use of knowledge-based technology such as PMWX for building virtual communities is still in its infancy, but there are several communities that are using it on a regular basis. We will report on our experiences with the use of these technologies.