Wikitaboo

Asiakas

Alessandro Valitutti, Department of Computer Science

alessandro.valitutti@cs.helsinki.fi

Työn kuvaus

A typical wiki page is a hypertext page in which a given term, shown as the title, is explained or described. The text typically contains one or more terms linked to other wiki pages. In this way, if the reader does not understand the term, she can click on it and access to the corresponding page. Nevertheless there are cases in which the terms appear too difficult for readers that are not familiar with the topic. In this case, clicks on unknown terms could lead to pages containing other unknown terms, and the process could continue in a way that the user will easily get lost and loose the motivation to understand the content of the first page. Instead, the reader might want to read a simplified version of the initial page, without the unknown terms.

The idea proposed here consists of enriching the browsing of wiki pages, and the collaborative way to edit them, with an additional feature consisting in the visualization of a version of the page without the set of unknown (or, more generally unwanted) terms (called here taboo terms). This function is paired to a corresponding taboo editing modality, consisting in the page editing under the constraint to avoid one or more taboo words. The term ”taboo” is employed here in analogy with the game “Taboo”, in which players have to describe terms without using a special list of words. 1

In a similar way than the traditional wiki, there are two modalities, view and edit, each associated to a different role. For example, if the wiki is part of a course management system (e.g. Moodle), there are two roles: student and teacher. The student can notice the presence of unknown (i.e. taboo) terms. If she clicks on one of them with the taboo features, and there is not a corresponding page, the term will be noticed to the teacher. The teacher can see the list of taboo words and can edit the wiki pages according to it (or some subset) according to the didactic purposes. The taboo words could be arranged in different levels, in order to motivate the student to access to the next level only after have understood all the words of the previous one. This collaborative mechanism can select only a limited number of possible alternative pages associated to the same term. In summary, when the student read the wiki page containing taboo terms, three possible operations are available: 1) click on the term and access to the corresponding page, 2) tag the term as taboo (in case there is no page associated with it), or 3) click and kill the term (i.e. generate a page without that word). The operations 2) and 3) could be integrated. This additional dimension is as easy as the traditional modality of wiki editing and reading. A wiki with the taboo function will be called wikitaboo.

A team of three students should be sufficient for the building of a prototype of wiki employing these functionalities and, possibly, integrating it in a simple course management system. The following tasks could be assigned to each student.

• Design and implementation of the content
• Design and implementation of the wiki interface (in particular, taboo-edit and click-and-kill).
• Implementation of the system in the web

Toteutusympäristö

Web-based implementation is preferred, will be decided based on the team skillset and preferences.

Erityisvaatimukset

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Immateriaalioikeudet

Projekti toteutetaan laitoksen yleisen lisenssisopimuksen alaisuudessa.

Lisätietoja