Community Building around Encyclopaedic Knowledge

This paper gives a brief overview of current technologies in systems handling encyclopaedic knowledge. Since most of the electronic encyclopaedias currently available are rather static and inflexible, greatly enhanced functionality is introduced that enables users to work more effectively and collaboratively. Users have the ability, for instance, to add annotations to every kind of object and can have private and shared workspaces. The techniques described employ user profiles in order to adapt to users and involve statistical analysis to improve search results. Moreover, a tracking and navigation mechanism based on trails is presented.