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<h1>Collaboration, Knowledge Representation and Automatability</h1>

<p>"Collaboration" over the World Wide Web is a very broad area of research,
involving wide-reaching issues such as knowledge representation, annotation
of objects by objects, notification, and any other issues which arise in the
creation of shared information systems and collaborative development.</p>

<p>This document, begun in 1995, describes a number of W3C activities
relating to collaboration, knowledge representation and Web automation. It
should not be considered up to date, but might nevertheless be useful.</p>

<p>Contents: <a href="#over">Overview</a> | <a href="#timeline">Timeline</a>
| <a href="#implementations">Implementations</a> | <a
href="#resources">Resources</a> | <a href="#wg">Historical</a></p>

<p>Nearby: <a href="/RDF/">RDF</a> | <a href="/PICS/">PICS</a> | <a
href="/2000/01/sw/">Semantic Web Development</a> | <a
href="/TandS/">Technology and Society</a></p>
<a name="over"></a>

<h2>Overview</h2>

<p>This document was originally organised into sections corresponding to
early W3C Working Groups on the topics of Annotation, Collaboration and
Knowledge Representation. In the years since these areas were first explored
on the Web, hundreds of new tools for Web collaboration have been created.
The focus of this page is now more specifically directed at annotation and
knowledge-representation based collaborative tools.</p>

<h3><a id="annotation" name="annotation">Annotation</a></h3>

<p>An annotation can be loosely defined as "any object that is associated
with another object by some relationship". One example of an annotation could
be a document which contains comments on an original document, such as a
magazine's review of a web site, or a colleague's modifications to a
draft.</p>

<h3><a id="kr" name="kr">Knowledge Representation</a></h3>

<p>The Web can be thought of as a freeform, decentralised knowledge
representation system. The <a href="/History/1989/proposal.html">original
proposal for the Web</a> explored this idea, a theme that was revisited in
1997 when W3C begun work on the <a href="/RDF/">Resource Description
Framework</a> (RDF). Other work on wide-area KR interoperability includes
DARPA's <a href="http://www.daml.org/">DAML</a> initiative, and (historical
interest) the <a
href="http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/papers/kse-overview.html">Knowledge
Sharing Effort</a></p>

<p>W3C's <a href="/2000/01/sw/">Semantic Web Development</a> pages provide
further detail on the use of Web technologies for knowledge representation
and collaboration.</p>
<a name="timeline"></a>

<h2>Timeline and History</h2>

<p>Recent events and publications relating to WWW and collaboration...</p>
<ul>
  <li>2000-09-03: the <a href="/Collaboration/">Collaboration</a> page has
    been reorganised, validated as XHTML, linked to more recent work. Hope is
    to use the <a href="/2000/08/w3c-synd/#">W3C Site Summary</a> dialect of
    XHTML to merge news items from this page with those from RDF home page
    and other related documents.</li>
</ul>

<h3>Background</h3>

<p>In September 1995, the W3C sponsored a <a href="Workshop/">Workshop on WWW
and Collaboration</a> to identify extensions to web technology which would
facilitate wide-area asynchronous collaboration.</p>

<p>W3C host two discussion lists as a continuation of this initiative. The <a
id="www-collaboration" name="www-collaboration">www-collaboration</a> list
(<a
href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-collaboration/">archives</a>)
provides a public mailing list for technical discussion on the use and
further development of web technology for collaboration, particularly
wide-area and asynchronous collaboration. The <a id="www-annotation"
name="www-annotation">www-annotation</a> list, (<a
href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-annotation/">archives</a>)
provides a public mailing list for technical discussion on <a
href="#annotation">annotation</a>, to continue the work originally begun on
the W3C Annotation Working Group mailing list.</p>

<p>Other than providing a forum for these discussions through these public
mailing lists, the W3C is not actively involved in the development of
collaboration-specific technology at this time. This page should point you to
further resources and put you in contact with people working in these
areas.</p>

<h2><a id="implementations" name="implementations">Implementations</a></h2>

<p>There are now numerious implementations of Web-based collaboration and
annotation tools. It is no longer feasible to attempt a reasonable survey of
such tools on this page. A few interesting systems are listed here; the links
gathered on the <a href="/RDF/">RDF</a>, <a href="/PICS/">PICS</a> and <a
href="/2000/01/sw/">Semantic Web Development</a> page may also be of
interest.</p>

<h3>Annotation, Metadata and Rating Services</h3>
<ul>
  <li>Annotation project using RDF at W3C:
    <ul>
      <li><a href="/2000/Talks/www9-annotations/">WWW9 Developer's Day
        presentation</a></li>
      <li><a
        href="/2000/02/collaboration/annotation/papers/annotationinfrastructure">paper</a>
        submitted to <a href="http://www.acm.org/uist">UIST 2000</a></li>
      <li><a href="/1999/11/02-RDFServices/">RDF Description Services</a>
        (discussion note for the <a href="/RDF/Interest/">RDF Interest
        Group</a>).</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>some interesting work elsewhere:
    <ul>
      <li>Dan Connolly's <a href="http://www.w3.org/2000/08/eb58">Javascript
        code</a> for excerpting from the Web.</li>
      <li>The <a href="http://crit.org/">Crit</a> service, based on CritLink
        (opensource Perl software) is one of the longest established online
        annotation servers.</li>
      <li>Netscape's <a
        href="http://home.netscape.com/escapes/related/">What's Related</a>
        service uses RDF to send 'related link' annotations to browsing
        clients. See also <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/rdf/doc/">Mozilla
        documentation</a>.</li>
      <li><a href="http://www-hbp.usc.edu/Projects/annotati.htm">USC
        Annotation Technology</a> pages include a set of specifications for
        annotation software design and a Java implmentation,
        <em>Annotator</em>.</li>
      <li><a
        href="http://edward.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/~cmlm/docs/recdoc1.html">Aggregating
        Recommendations using RDF</a>, Libby Miller.</li>
      <li><a
        href="http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/hypernews.html">NCSA
        Hypernews</a></li>
      <li><a href="http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/ANNOT_DOC/">ComMentor:
        Scalable Architecture for Shared Web Annotations as a Platform for
        Value-Added Providers</a>, at Stanford</li>
      <li><a href="http://dri.cornell.edu/pub/davis/annotation.html">Cornell
        Annotation System</a></li>
      <li><a href="../Discussion/">Web Interactive Talk</a> claims to be 'the
        first dialectical discussion system'. Here is a An <a
        href="../WIT/User/Overview.html">Overview</a> of 'Web Interactive
        Talk', the "first dialectical discussion system" (1994)</li>
      <li><a
        href="http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~liberte/www/scalable-annotations.html">A
        Protocol for Scalable Group and Public Annotations</a>, by Daniel
        LaLiberte and Alan Braverman of NCSA</li>
      <li><a
        href="http://playground.sun.com:80/~gramlich/1994/annote/">Public
        Annotation Systems</a>, discussion and implementation by Wayne
        Gramlich at Sun.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

<h2><a id="resources" name="resources">Further Resources</a></h2>

<p>There are many good places to learn more about Web collaboration and
annotation issues, technologies, and directions.</p>

<p><a href="EnglebartIOH.html">Essential Elements of an Open Hyperdocument
System</a>, as developed by Douglas Engelbart, make a good measuring stick
for evaluating collaborative technologies.</p>

<p><a href="knowledge">A Study of Linguistics: Representation and Exchange of
Knowledge</a> by <a href="/People/Connolly/">Dan Connolly</a> provides some
background reading on KR issues. See also Dan's <a
href="/People/Connolly/drafts/web-research">WWW Research Notebook</a>.</p>

<p>The <a href="/RDF/Interest/">RDF Interest Group</a> (since Nov 1999) is an
active public forum for discussing the application of W3C metadata technology
in the context of the social, legal, and technological issues surrounding
Internet content selection, filtering, labelling, signing, quality assurance
etc. The <a
href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/">searchable
archives</a> may be of interest for researchers in this area.</p>

<h3><a id="workshops" name="workshops">Workshop Materials</a></h3>

<h4><a href="http://www.cerc.wvu.edu/WETICE/WETICE96.html">IEEE WET ICE
'96</a>: Stanford, CA, USA, June 19-21, 1996</h4>
"Collaborating on the Internet: The World-Wide Web and Beyond". The Fifth
Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative
Enterprises (WET ICE '96) will focus on infrastructural issues related to
collaboration in diverse application domains, particularly technologies that
utilize the Internet.

<p><a href="http://orgwis.gmd.de/W4G">CSCW and the Web</a>, Sankt Augustin,
Germany, February 7-9, 1996, was an an open international workshop on support
for collaboration on the Web sponsored by the ERCIM World-Wide Web Working
Group (W4G) and GMD.</p>

<p>The first <a href="./Workshop/">Workshop on WWW and Collaboration</a> was
held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA from 11-12 September 1995.</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="./Workshop/Overview.html#proceedings">Workshop
  Proceedings</a></li>
  <li><a href="./Workshop/Original_Overview.html">Original Workshop home
    page</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
  <li>The Second International World Wide Web Conference held a <a
    href="http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/iiip/colab/workshop.html">Wide-Area
    Collaboration Workshop</a>, intended as a brainstorming session on ways
    to extend and develop the Web for group collaboration.</li>
</ul>
<a id="historical" name="historical"></a>

<h2><a id="wg" name="wg">W3C Collaboration Working Groups</a>
(historical)</h2>

<p>At the <a href="./Workshop/">Workshop on WWW and Collaboration</a>, 11-12
September 1995, a large number of issues were raised, and several working
groups were formed to work on specific issues. These groups have now been
merged into two public discussion groups: <a
href="#www-collaboration">www-collaboration</a> and <a
href="#www-annotation">www-annotation</a>. All are welcome to read the
archives and participate in development and discussion.</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="./Annotation/">Annotation WG</a> (historical)</li>
  <li><a href="./KR/">Knowledge Representation WG</a> (historical)</li>
  <li><a href="./Notification">Notification WG</a> (historical)</li>
  <li><a href="./Links/">Links as First Class Objects</a> (historical)</li>
</ul>
<address>
  occasionally edited by: <a href="mailto:brickley@w3.org">Dan Brickley</a>
</address>
<address>
  Last updated $Date: 2004/05/21 20:33:08 $
</address>
<address>
  Created March 1995
</address>
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