**2.1 The characteristics of the KnowCat community knowledge**

KnowCat enables us to build up community knowledge sites or knowledge areas. Each knowledge site is divided into three workspaces:


More specifically, the community knowledge is organised around several knowledge elements. These knowledge elements and the relationships among them are shown in figure 1.

#### Fig. 1. KnowCat knowledge elements

Firstly, the knowledge tree, which is a hierarchical structure of topics, displays the organisation of the knowledge site in several topics.

Secondly, each topic contains a set of mutually alternative documents that describe the topic. At any given time, all documents contained in the same topic compete with each other

building Web sites where relevant and structured knowledge about some area or topic can

The KnowCat system is presented in the Section 2. Its Knowledge Crystallisation mechanism is detailed in Section 3. The system has evolved for the last twelve years, during this period it has been used with several user communities and a great amount of research data and results have been obtained, which are presented in Section 4. Finally, this paper

KnowCat (acronym for "Knowledge Catalyser") is a fully consolidated and thoroughly tested and validated Knowledge Management system which has been developed at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) an in active use since 1999 (Alamán and Cobos,

KnowCat enables us to build up community knowledge sites or knowledge areas. Each

Community knowledge workspace, which shows the knowledge elements contributed

Communication community space, which supports the communication among the

 Personal user workspace, a workspace in which each user can see their own contributions to the knowledge site and can receive information about the interactions

More specifically, the community knowledge is organised around several knowledge elements. These knowledge elements and the relationships among them are shown in

Firstly, the knowledge tree, which is a hierarchical structure of topics, displays the

Secondly, each topic contains a set of mutually alternative documents that describe the topic. At any given time, all documents contained in the same topic compete with each other

concludes with some conclusions and future works in Section 5.

**2.1 The characteristics of the KnowCat community knowledge** 

knowledge site is divided into three workspaces:

of other users related to their contributions.

be found (Cobos, 2003).

**2. The KnowCat system** 

1999; Cobos, 2003).

by the users.

figure 1.

users through e-mail lists.

Fig. 1. KnowCat knowledge elements

organisation of the knowledge site in several topics.

to be considered as the "best" description of the topic. This competitive environment is achieved by the Knowledge Crystallisation mechanism of the system, which is supported by virtual communities of users. Furthermore, each document has a "crystallisation degree", which determinates the social acceptation of this one for the user community (more details in Section 3). At any time, the author of a document can contribute with a new version of his/her document.

Thirdly, each document can receive annotations –or note, for short–. A note is a review about the information presented in a document. Each note has a type that determinates its purpose. We have the following note types:


Finally, each document can receive assessments. An assessment represents a "weight assertion" which can be used by the users in order to determinate how good (with a value from 1, minimum value, to 10, maximum value) a specific aspect (i.e. correctness, innovation, etc.) of a specific part of a document (i.e. introduction, references, etc.) is. E.g. References.Completeness=9 *(Part.Aspect=value)* means that a specific document, in the opinion of the user, has the 90% of appropriated references (i.e. some few number of references are missing in this document).

#### **2.2 The collaborative work supported by KnowCat at the community knowledge workspace**

The KnowCat users can collaborate in a knowledge site trough the following potential interactions: modifying the knowledge tree, adding a document to a selected topic, voting a document, annotating and contributing with assessments about a document, adding a document version, accessing to documents and document versions, accessing to notes and assessments.

In figure 2, we can see an example screenshot of the community knowledge workspace of "Technical Office" KnowCat site.

Knowledge Crystallisation Supported by the KnowCat System 189

e. Adding an annotation to a document. A user contributes a note to a document in order to make suggestions and/or give comments or opinions. It is possible to annotate a specific document when displayed on the screen. In order to use this operation, a user has to contribute with the following: i) a text, which expresses the assistance that the user wants to provide to the author of the annotated document and ii) a note type (see

f. Adding assessments to a document: A user contributes with assessments to a document at the same time that s/he is annotating it. In order to use this operation, a user has to contribute with the following: i) select an element of the document (i.e. introduction, references, etc.), ii) select an aspect to evaluate (i.e. correctness, innovation, etc.) of the selected element (i.e. introduction, references, etc.) and iii) a value from 1 to 10 (1

g. Displaying the content of a note and the content of assessments. When the content of a document is displayed, it is possible to access the list of its received notes and

h. Adding a new version of a document. The author of a document can contribute with a new version of her/his document at any time. This operation is available as a sub-case

i. Displaying the content of a new document version. When the content of a document, which is versioned, is displayed, it is possible to select to display its proposed new

A virtual community (Schlichter et.al., 1998) is a group of users that are considered experts in one or more related topics. In this work the opinions from experts are important because they should have more impact than opinions from novices or occasional

Virtual communities of experts are constructed in terms of the knowledge tree. For each topic, the community of experts in this topic is composed of the authors of the crystallised documents on the topic, on the parent of the topic, on any of the children of the topic or on any of the sisters of the topic. There is a virtual community for each topic of the knowledge tree, and any successful author usually belongs to several related

When it is started a knowledge area there is only a root node with the main topic. Probably, there will not be enough people and interactions to make the knowledge crystallisation mechanism credible. In relation with this bootstrapping problem, virtual communities have also proven to be handful. Virtual communities behave in a different way when they are just beginning. So, it is proposed a maturation process that involves several phases. Figure 3

At the beginning stages the user community work in a "supervised" mode. During this supervised phase there will be a steering committee in charge of proposing knowledge structures (initial refinements of the root node) and voting for them. The members of the steering committee are defined in the moment of creation of the knowledge area; new

document.

version.

users.

communities.

shows this evolution.

previous section).

minimum value, 10 maximum value).

assessments on the left side of the screen.

of the "Adding document" operation.

**2.3 Virtual communities and knowledge evolution** 

members can be added by consensus of the current members.

document. The latter is by far the most popular voting mechanism in the system and has been validated as the most useful way of expressing agreement with a


Fig. 2. KnowCat example screen of a knowledge site about "Technical Office".

The details of the user operations provided by KnowCat are:


Fig. 2. KnowCat example screen of a knowledge site about "Technical Office".

a. Modifying the knowledge tree, which is displayed on the left side of the screen in Figure 2. The user can participate in the collaborative construction of the knowledge tree. They can suggest adding, deleting or modifying topics of the knowledge tree. b. Adding a new document to a selected topic. A user contributes with a document (normally a Web page located in a Web server) related to a specific topic of the knowledge tree. From this moment on, the document can receive votes from other users, notes and assessments (normally from other users) and a revised version from the original author. As seen on right side of the screen in Figure 2, the documents are identified by the author's name, arrival date and title. They are ordered by their crystallisation degree, which is shown to the right of the identification heading of each document (with the green-red bar). On the left side of the identification heading of each document are the icons indicating whether a document has received notes and assessments and whether a new version of the document is available. For example, the document identified by "Ismael Ma [27/04/2010] (OFITEC10 – ingeniería básica)"

shows the highest crystallisation degree in the topic called "Basic Engineering". c. Displaying the content of a document (accessing to a document). When a topic is selected from the knowledge tree (it is displayed on the left of the screen) the identification of its documents are shown on the right of the screen. A user can display the content of a document by clicking its identification. The document is then displayed

d. Voting a document. A user can express with a vote the degree to which s/he is in agreement with a document. There are two types of voting mechanisms available in KnowCat: i) a value from a range (1-5, where 1 is the minimum value and 5 the maximum one) and ii) with the single value "1" to denote agreement with the

The details of the user operations provided by KnowCat are:

on the right side of the screen.

document. The latter is by far the most popular voting mechanism in the system and has been validated as the most useful way of expressing agreement with a document.

