Social Infobox:
Collaborative Knowledge Construction
by Social Property Tagging
Masahiro Hamasaki

Abstract

National Institute of Advanced

We propose a novel style of social tagging to constructknowledge collaboratively called Social Property
Tagging and introduce the prototype system SocialInfobox. Structured data is useful for computer system,
however defining structure of knowledge forrepresenting data semantics is usually a costly andtime consuming task. In general, data structures areconstructed by experts of knowledge engineering. Our
method aims to construct not only structured data butalso structure of data collaboratively by simple user
input.

Industrial Science and Technology/JST, CREST.
1-18-13 Sotokanda
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo JAPAN.
hamasaki@ni.aist.go.jp
Masataka Goto
National Institute of Advanced
Industrial Science and Technology
1-1-1 Umezono
Tsukuba, Ibaraki JAPAN.
m.goto@aist.go.jp

Keywords

Hideaki Takeda

Collaborative tagging, information management,
semantic web

National Institute of Informatics
2-1-2, Hitotsubashi

ACM Classification Keywords

Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo JAPAN.

H.5.3 Information Interfaces and Presentation: Groupand Organization Interfaces – web-based interaction,
collaborative computing.

takeda@nii.ac.jpCopyright is held by the author/owner(s).

General Terms

CSCW 2011, March 19–23, 2011, Hangzhou, China.
ACM

978-1-4503-0556-3/11/03.

Algorithms, Human Factors, Design641

Introduction
Defining structure of knowledge for representing data
semantics is usually a costly and time consuming task.
Ontology is one of powerful structures of knowledge
and there are many methodologies and tools forconstruction. The most popular approach isengineering-oriented, i.e., a small number ofindividuals carefully constructs the representation of
the domain of discourse, and provides them at somepoint in time to a wider member of community.
Gruber defined ontologies are explicit
conceptualizations of a domain of discourse [1]. In
context of semantic web, the representation of ontology
should have a formal semantics because it leads
machine readable and supports machine reasoning.
However, it is important to note that ontologies are notjust formal representations of a domain, but much
more community contracts about such formal
representations [2]. Since a discourse is a dynamic
social process and such a community contract cannot
be static, it must be able to reflect the community
consensus at any point in time.
Wikipedia’s Infobox is famous structure data
constructed by CGM. However, it takes the popular
approach, editors use pre-defined template. Some tools
for collaborative construction of ontologies areproposed [3], but most of all them aim collaboration
among experts or semi-experts who know set ofvocabularies to represent structure of knowledge.
How does wisdom of crowds construct structure ofknowledge? Social tagging has the potential to produce
socially constructed information organization schemes[4, 5]. However, such the produced structure is simple

642

and it is hard to describe in detail. So in this paper, wepropose novel style of social tagging for construct
structured data.

How does wisdom of crowds construct
structure of knowledge?
It is hard for even a person who has knowledge tounderstand structure of knowledge. However it does
not mean that there is no structure for knowledge intheir mind. It seems that each person has a personal
and weak structure for knowledge and it is notexternalized and shared.
What method can externalize and share such apersonal and weak structure of knowledge? We foundthat many users can externalize and share shortcontents which is immediately available for recall e.g.,tags or comments from the success of social
bookmarking. However, how does social tagging
construct structure of knowledge?
Before that, we reconsider base structure ofknowledge: class and property. Property indicates acharacteristic of resource. People add a property to a
resource in order to categorize or identify a resourcefrom others. For example, we can guess tags for Tim B.
Lee are "World Wide Web", "W3C", "Sir", etc. When weconvert from these tags to attribute-value pairs, thesetags are "creator: World Wide Web", "affiliation: W3C",
and "title: Sir". At that time, we do not guess tags e.g.,
his blood type or stronger hand. It means that thesecharacteristics are less important than the above when
we categorize or identify Tim B. Lee. On the otherhand, stronger hand will be tagged when we tag
baseball players.

Form this scenario, we can find existence of a group ofresources which we need to compare each other or
identify one from them. When we suppose such animplicit group is a prototype of a class, we can findquasi class from popular set of properties. It meansthat wisdom of crowds constructs structure ofknowledge.

Proposed Method
In this research, we proposed Social Property
Tagging as a method to construct knowledge
collaboratively. It allows users to input information
without formal definition of classes and properties andassists users to construct knowledge collaboratively. It
consists of two components.

values (attribute-value pairs). This style ofrepresentation is similar to Wikipedia’s Infobox. Users
can add not only resources but also properties and theirvalues freely without definition of a class or a property.
So users can add properties to a resource easily like asocial tagging. Wikipedia allows all users to write
description but it is a hard work so a few people edit
them in spite of the huge number of users. Adding aproperty and its value or filling a value to a property is
not so hard for users so we expect that many users add
metadata like a social tagging.

Property Tagging: Users add attribute-value pair
as a tag of a resource. It facilitates input data for users
because the size of input becomes small and simple. It
allows users to add new properties which they need.
Then users can input data based on own style ofstructure of information.
Property Suggest: It suggests properties andtheir values to users using input data. It helps data toconstruct structure and reduces burden of users toinput data.

We develop the prototype system called Social
Infobox 1 for collaborative knowledge construction bysocial property tagging (Fig.1). The proposed systemallows users to read, create, delete, and update datalike a Wiki. The data consists of Resource, Property,and Value. A resource has some properties and their
1 http://tinyurl.com/socialinfobox

643

figure 1. Screenshot of the prototype system.

However, it merely increases variety of property only ifusers add properties freely. It cannot progress toward
structuraition of whole data. Then, the system suggests

properties using existing data. It aims to not only
reduce user's load but also become structured. Viewed
from interface aspect, Property suggest has 2 types.
Direct Suggest is the system suggests properties andvalues based on co-occurrence of properties because
popular set of properties indicates quasi class.
Comparison suggest is the system suggests
resources to compare based on similarity of properties
and their values Because role of a property is
describing characteristic to identify from others A user
can find properties and values from comparison of atarget and others

User StudyIn this section, we report user studies using ourprototype system. Users of the prototype system areonly few members include the developer and we havenot find verified results yet. However, we think thisreport of user studies imply a possibility of the
proposed system to help users to construct knowledge
without explicit definition of and deep consideration fora class.
Firstly, we found a group of resources which sharedsome properties. For example, "Tim B. Lee" and"Masahiro Hamasaki" shared properties "affiliation" and"expertise". It seems that it is a (weak) internal
definition of a class. Secondly, we found a group ofresources which become a value of same properties.
For example, "WWW", "IJCAI", and "AAAI" are values ofproperty "International Conference". It seems that it isa (weak) external definition of a class and a name ofthe property is a name of that class. Thirdly, we foundproperties whose values are few varieties. "Type ofService" property is one of examples in this case. It hasvalues, e.g., "Social Networking" or "Video Sharing". It644

seems that these are (weak) external definition ofclasses and values are name of these classes.

Conclusion
In this paper, we propose Social Property Tagging andintroduce the system called Social Infobox forcollaborative knowledge construction. The proposedsystem makes users to add resources and properties
easily like social tagging, and suggests properties toconstruct set of vocabularies collaboratively that cover
the classes and properties users need. It does not
require explicit pre-defined structure and allows all
potential users to describe information or knowledge
using vocabularies which they deem necessary.

Acknowledgements
This research was supported by JST, CREST.

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