Date: Sun Sep 16 2001 - 14:43:06 PDT

Unfinished Revolution
unrev-II@egroups.com
unrev-II@yahoogroups.com
OHS DKR Project
SRI International
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Menlo Park, CA 94025
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Subject:

Eugene's work: FAQ-index into an argument

We had a meeting with Eugene the other day, and took a look at what he had been hammering on for a while. I have to say that I saw it in a whole new light, which previous posts on the subject had not adequately brought to my attention.
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In those posts, Eugene described making "dialog maps" of conversations. There was a nice graphic version in PNG form, and also an HTML version.
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I recall looking at the PNG. Nice, but not too useful. (Diagrams with a few words, lines between them, but no embedded links that would let you get to the meat of the discussion.)

I don't recall that I looked at the HTML form. THERE is where the real valuable work-product lies.
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Those HTML pages are not HTML renditions of "dialog maps" so much as they are FAQ-style indexes into the discussions!!

In other words, they would make a superb method for collecting and codifying the information available in email archives, WITHOUT modifying the archives.
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A few salient points woth mentioning:

• There are thousands of words in the unrev archives that may never see the light of day, because its just to damn hard to find anything. This mechanism could provide the answer to that problem.
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• The archives are plinked (purple numbered). But Eugene has the modified mail server to do that as messages are archived, as well as tools to plink past archives.
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• It takes a lof of effort to build the map. Basically, each day he has to build in the information content from the day's posts. I suspect that this will be normal -- that the addition of topic maps and structured argumentation methodologies will require, and will in fact produce a new profession of practicing ontologists who do this work as their full time job. In addition:

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1. As users get more familiar with it, they will pre-identify material as they create it.
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2. Ontologists will also find themselves re-categorizing existing material to make it part of the archive.
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3. Ontologiests will be defining ontology-translations, so as to do wholesale imports of information in other knowledge-bases
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4. Ontologists will monitor results produced by "ontology- inspection agents" -- computerized programs that run around searching for isomorphic ontologies, with an eye towards finding and mining relevant work.

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• QuestMap to build the dialog map. The results are then converted to an HTML page. That mechanism probably makes it difficult for others to massage the FAQ. But other mechanisms could be developed, and probably will be, once the value of the result is recognized.
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• One thing the system needs to do is to post links to the summarized information. Those links would "complete the circle" -- the index has pointers into the email archive, and the messages would have responses that point to where the information is summarized. The most important result of such notification pages would be the ability to click a link to see how a discussion I have been part of was summarized -- in case I want to make changes. (Or maybe become further enlightened.)
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• The methodology is nicely applicable to structured arguments. Especially since, as we have observed, the structure tends to become apparent after the fact.

• One of the examples Eugene pointed to was a collection of issues that had been discussed in a disparate collection of emails. Since IBIS mandated that there had to be a question, he was motivated to identify the commonality. He gathered them all under the question: "What problems pertain to preserving link integrity", thereby coming up with a whole new category to add to the ontology (link integrity).
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• The ontology is currently captured as a glossary. So all the concepts are present, but relationships among them are intuitively understood, rather than made explicit. (But, should we advance to topic maps at some point, life may get a lot more interesting.)

• The glossary pages are maintained as T-Wiki pages, which means that anyone can edit them, but they are access-controlled, versioned, and there is a lot more flexibility for creating links.

Sincerely,

Armstrong Consulting

Eric Armstrong
eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com