When we talk about Semantic Web, there are not many platforms that are leading the way to represent semantically structured knowledge. Semantic Web is an extension of hyperlinked human-readable web pages using machine-readable metadata about pages and how they are related to each other. As of 2021, there are only two leaders Wikipedia and Wikidata, owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. that have explicitly focused on the Semantic Web.
A Florida based company Wikitia, led by co-founder Jeremy Redd is using Ontology engineering to enhance the development of ontologies for search strings. Through Wikitia.com, they are involving users who are not experts in creating ontologies and semantically annotated content however they can help in extracting explicit knowledge from the interaction of users within this platform.
Wikitia is using automated processing of text and multimedia information that is not interpretable by software agents, however search results can be improved by adding rich semantics to the corresponding resources, such as video and audio files. From February 2021, they are creating over 500 ontologies every day for human viewing and machines. Many web applications are trying to address the issue by creating a machine-readable format upon the publishing of data or the request of a machine for such data.
One of the major issues in developing semantic web is that the current focus is only on biographies and companies, where the earth and other search topics are usually ignored. Wikipedia is largely hampered by undisclosed paid editors and they work majorly on paid edits. Wikitia on this upfront is trying to use their team of editors and involving external editors by asking for a fee where they can contribute to other focused areas and as well biographies and organisations. The editors need to maintain a ratio of 1:4 for other topics vs biographies and organisations.
Example of a Knowledge Graph built from Wikitia
Wikitia is asking for a fee for editing existing pages, which is different from Wikipedia and Wikidata. Redd shares that “question of basic feasibility of a complete or even partial fulfillment of the Semantic Web through Wikitia are difficulties in setting it up and a lack of general-purpose usefulness that prevents the required effort from being invested”. Instead of a donation model, we are trying to generate revenues through fee from editing pages and creating pages from a team of their verified editors. The goal is to have over 100,000 pages by the end of September 2021.
Wikitia is in talks with Angel investors to raise money and are in the last stages to close the funding round. The money will be used for servers and facilitating the integration of information from mixed sources.
The focus of this platform is in resolving ambiguities, integration of information from mixed sources, identifying relevant information within the domain and providing decision making support to the search engines.
Redd shared that instead of asking any editor to free in the long run or just survive on donation can’t be a feasible business model. Editors must be paid for their time to be honest with the platform and to contribute the most. The goal of Wikitia is to offer knowledge management using distributed artificial intelligence and editors can contribute with a purpose.
