SMWCon Fall 2018/How human perception and classification influence semantic knowledge, and vice versa

In this talk I will explore how human perception, the recognition of common things such as colors, sounds and objects is often not absolute, but relative. Many types of classifications are arbitrary. In western society, we determine the pitch of a sound as high or low, but there are cultures around the world who would say thick or thin. Even within western society, there are language bound differences as well. People who speak Russian are better able to visually determine different colors of blue, which have a distinct name in their language. Effects like this influence the way knowledge is captured in databases. The same is true vice versa, perception is altered after knowledge has been consumed by users, which has been classified in a database in a certain way. This topic is explored with everyday examples in relation to the usefulness of and ability for a community driven data collection to evolve, after it has been set up. Practically, the experience of designing a database with semantic medawiki will be shared for a community driven platform that aims to promote good science.