StYLiD: Social Information Sharing with Free Creation of Structured Linked Data
Aman Shakya, Hideaki Takeda, Vilas Wuwongse · 2008
Information sharing can be effective with structured data. The Semantic Web is mainly aimed at structuring information by creating widely accepted ontologies. However, users have different preferences and evolving requirements. It is not practical to attempt perfect schema definitions with strict constraints. Creating structured formats should be a collaborative and evolutionary process. Social software motivates wide participation by providing easy interface. We propose a system called StYLiD for sharing a wide variety of structured information. Users freely define their own structured concepts. The system consolidates different versions defined by different users. The attributes of the different concept versions are aligned semi-automatically into a single unified view. Popular concepts gradually emerge from the concept cloud and stabilize. Concept definitions are flexible. An attribute value can take a literal or a resource URI and the suggestive range does not constrain the contributors. StYLiD generates unique dereferenceable URIs so that data items can form a linked data web. Structured data is embedded in machine readable form using RDFa. Search and browsing features are provided to utilize the structured data and consolidated concepts.