Virtual Communities as Narrative Processes

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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

Universita degli Studi dell’Insubria(cc) Some rights reserved.

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1 IntroductionE-mail exchangeShared repositoriesInteractive content update technologies

2 New TextsNew what?Communities as the result of narrativesAnatomy of BlogsAnatomy of Wikis

3 From narratives to OWLNatural language parsing for narrativesThe model in OWL termsHow to use reflection in our modelBehind the Curtain

4 Concluding Remarks

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The Main Question we started from

What is the main limitof current network-basedcollaboration models?

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The Main Question we started from

What is the main limitof current network-basedcollaboration models?

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What are the current collaboration models, anyway?

According to Leuf and Cunningham (2002), there are threemodels, historically determined:

1 e-mail exchange (including mailing lists);

2 shared repositories;

3 interactive content update technologies.

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E-mail exchange

Perhaps the most used mailing list software ever used...

MAJORDOMO LICENSE AGREEMENTVersion 1.118 May 96

Great Circle Associates (GCA) is the original developer of Majordomo, apackage for managing Internet mailing lists. Since its initial release, manyorganizations 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 moduleswritten in Perl (there is one small C program), and runs on many UNIXplatforms. Majordomo is not a supported product of Great CircleAssociates, 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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E-mail exchange

Their main service is to provide conferences

Discussion lists are organized in conferences, i.e. threads ofmessages about a common topic.

Cross-posting is possible but discouraged as it is perceived asunfair and unpolite.

Their paradigm is: “write once, read many”.

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E-mail exchange

Their main service is to provide conferences

Discussion lists are organized in conferences, i.e. threads ofmessages about a common topic.

Cross-posting is possible but discouraged as it is perceived asunfair and unpolite.

Their paradigm is: “write once, read many”.

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Shared repositories

From messaging to shared repositories

Along with the spread of the network and users as well, peoplestart to need file-sharing across posting.

Shared repositories were the first service to be developed, andthereafter the aim was to give a complete support, so that thecommunity members were invited to use the Internet almostexclusively through the community support.

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Shared repositories

Mostly LMS are still used as shared repositories

Other features soon came: personal web pages, email address...

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Interactive content update technologies

Interactive content update technologies, all-inclusive

Virtual communities, encouraging participation and active learningamong remote users, naturally prefer this third model, since theirmembers aim to establish social relations, and this goal is easier toachieve if users are allowed to update content interactively.

The aim behind these systems was to offer an all-inclusiveenvironment, in order to give a complete support to eachparticipant’s need, so that the community members were invited touse the Internet almost exclusively through the community support.

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Interactive content update technologies, all-inclusive

Virtual communities, encouraging participation and active learningamong remote users, naturally prefer this third model, since theirmembers aim to establish social relations, and this goal is easier toachieve if users are allowed to update content interactively.

The aim behind these systems was to offer an all-inclusiveenvironment, in order to give a complete support to eachparticipant’s need, so that the community members were invited touse the Internet almost exclusively through the community support.

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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 andunpredictable.

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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 andunpredictable.

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A first answer to our Main Question

Recall:

what is the main limit of current network-basedcollaboration models?

Our claim: community members’ wishes cannot be foreseen sincethey arise after the community uses the software for enough timeto evolve itself, while the design of the software takes place beforethe community starts to operate.

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Recall: what is the main limit of current network-basedcollaboration models?


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Our claim:

community members’ wishes cannot be foreseen sincethey arise after the community uses the software for enough timeto evolve itself, while the design of the software takes place beforethe community starts to operate.

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New what?

‘New Texts’ overcomes some limits

In the 21th century, users’ awareness increased enough to a newkind 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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New what?




while


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New what?




while


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New what?




while


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New what?

Why so popular? Aneddoctical evidences

It is very, very easy to add content by means of their markuplanguages.

The underlying hypertext is unstructured or semi-structured,so that people can decide collectively how to organize theircontent.

Last, not least, blogs and wikis allow and favour activecollaboration.

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New what?





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New what?





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New what?





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New what?

The design and development of new texts is still traditional

Our point:

the purpose of the software is just to support a livingcommunity.

Therefore: a communityware should support a virtual communityfrom its start permitting its evolution with the social rules thatparticipants arbitrarily decide to adopt, according to thecommunity life. The social rules belong to the community, whichcan modify them over time to reflect new needs and wishes.

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New what?


Our point: the purpose of the software is just to support a livingcommunity.


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New what?



Therefore:

a communityware should support a virtual communityfrom its start permitting its evolution with the social rules thatparticipants arbitrarily decide to adopt, according to thecommunity life. The social rules belong to the community, whichcan modify them over time to reflect new needs and wishes.

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New what?




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Communities as the result of narratives

Virtual communities as narratives

We start by designing and constructing a language allowing thewriting of the community history.

Virtual communities are considered as narratives, i.e. thecommunity state(s) depicts the information owned by thecommunity in a language specifically constructed for this purpose.

The language itself is part of the state; since the state varies overtime, and the language is part of it, the language may evolve aswell.

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Narrative central notions

We had found three semantic atoms for our formalisation:

1 User.

2 Message.

3 Conference.

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1 User.

2 Message.

3 Conference.

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1 User.

2 Message.

3 Conference.

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1 User.

2 Message.

3 Conference.

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Users are actors and perform actions in the community

John

send

1

a message

2

John is a User and he sends a Message...

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Messages are organised to form conferences

another conferencea conference

a message

a second message

a third message

a fourth message

John

...John’s Messages form conferences...

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Conferences and their history form the community tracking

community

a conference

another conference

rules

language

...finally, conferences and their rules depict the community state,

in the language defined insofar.

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Conferences and their history form the community tracking

community

a conference

another conference

rules

language

...finally, conferences and their rules depict the community state,in the language defined insofar.

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Anatomy of Blogs

The annotation model as a variant of the thread model

's blog

post A

a comment

post B

John

JackPietro

's blog

Mario

post C

post D annotates B

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

a comment

The post is more important than the threaded answers.

Blog’s paradigm: “write yours, read and comment the others”.

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Anatomy of Blogs

The annotation model as a variant of the thread model

's blog

post A

a comment

post B

John

JackPietro

's blog

Mario

post C

post D annotates B

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

a comment

The post is more important than the threaded answers.Blog’s paradigm: “write yours, read and comment the others”.

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Anatomy of Wikis


Tuesday

a wiki

edit E edit G

edit F

edit H

John MarioJack Pietro

Monday

Wednesday

Unlike blogs, wiki conference history becomes a sequence ofpatches of differences between subsequent messages.

Wiki’s paradigm: “write anonymously and freely after carefulreading”.

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Anatomy of Wikis


Tuesday

a wiki

edit E edit G

edit F

edit H

John MarioJack Pietro

Monday

Wednesday

Unlike blogs, wiki conference history becomes a sequence ofpatches of differences between subsequent messages.Wiki’s paradigm: “write anonymously and freely after carefulreading”.

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Natural language parsing for narratives

The example before described in terms of a narrative

‘‘John is an user. John’s blog is a set ofconferences, owned by John. A comment is a message.Only users may post messages.’’

The rules above describe the social actions possible within John’sblog.

Actions are composed by events that can be described in acontrolled subset of English. The parser will extract theinformation for the formalisation in OWL (see below).

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The example before described in terms of a narrative

‘‘John is an user. John’s blog is a set ofconferences, owned by John. A comment is a message.Only users may post messages.’’

The rules above describe the social actions possible within John’sblog.

Actions are composed by events that can be described in acontrolled subset of English. The parser will extract theinformation for the formalisation in OWL (see below).

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We follow Tesniere’s structural grammars for parsing

John

send

1

a message

2

The root is the verb. to send is a divalent verb. John is the firstactant (argument), a message the second actant.

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The rules are stored in two OWL knowledge bases

The parser’s output is translated in OWL rules. Each community isdescribed in terms of a OWL ontology pair:

1 history of the community;

2 state of the community.

Let’s see a minimal community in terms of pure OWL.

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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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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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Very briefly...

The verb domain is always a “User” and the range is either a“Message” or a “Conference”. The virtual community structurelinks the effect of the verb on the state of the community by meansof a program written in XML/XQuery (in the <vcs:action tag).

Messages always belong to Conferences.

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Attributes as OWL datatype propertiesThey 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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‘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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Evaluation

The narrative approach allows both to write the history of thecommunity, and to operate the core actions on the communitystate.

Moreover, the language used to tale the events is defined as part ofthe narration, like in mathematical textbooks, where the conceptsare first defined, and then used to derive results and to define newnotions.

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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 conferenceto an existing community.

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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 everyevent involving a change in the language can be regarded as a steptoward the evolution of the community.

Through the definition of social rules in the controlled naturallanguage (English, by the moment, but maybe Italian or whatever)users can decide the evolution of the community, as the rules arecoded directly in OWL!

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Behind the Curtain

Behind the Curtain: the Engine

How the ideal communityware engine works?

1 the engine takes the event as an input form the web;

2 the event plus the state becomes and OWL document;

3 if such a doment is valid and sound, the action is performedover the state;

4 the output becomes a (part of) the updated state.

Actions must be performed on the ontology state: each action isdefined by means of a function written in XML/XQuery.

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Behind the Curtain








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Behind the Curtain








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Behind the Curtain








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Behind the Curtain








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Behind the Curtain








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In practice, a more significant starting point is needed

The initial language should be non-empty and should represent awell recognised language to describe a community model.

The narration of an example of community life requires a languagethat 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 enablingmetaphor that allows their representation in a semantic websystem.

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In this paper

What we presented:

1 a formalisation of narratives as a new possible designapproach of the communitywares;

2 the fact that semantic web technology is mature to permit asignificant encoding of virtual communities in OWL.

What we still have to do:

1 the implementation of the engine;

2 the consequent collection of experimental data;

3 to what extent reflection can be used to simplify themanagement of complex communities?

4 the study of the application of Creative Commons licenses asspecific social rules.

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In this paper

What we presented:








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Thank you. Any questions?

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http://purl.org/net/fgobbo

(cc) M. Benini & F. Gobbo 2007. Attribuzione – Non commerciale – Condividi allo stesso modo 2.5

http://purl.org/net/fgobbo

Technology

Virtual Communities as Narrative Processes