Engineering on the Knowledge Formalization Continuum

Usually, domain knowledge is available at different levels of formality, for example such as documents, data bases, and (business) rules. We argue, that today’s systems limit the knowledge engineering process to a fixed level of formality and expressiveness, respectively, and that these limitations hinder effective knowledge acquisition and use. In consequence, we introduce the knowledge formalization continuum as a metaphor, that embraces the fact that knowledge is available in different formalities. We motivate that a semantic wiki is a suitable tool to work on the knowledge formalization continuum, and we introduce KnowWE as an example wiki implementation.