Fact Guru - How to create a knowledge base

How to create a knowledge base

These are some tips to give you an idea of the process involved in creating a knowledge base.

1. Understand the reason why you are creating a knowledge base. Some reasons include:

To help teach people about the knowledge
To help reach and record agreements about the meanings and definitions of terms
To act as a reference source for the general public or for a more restricted group of people
To act as an extended glossary for an ordinary book or web site
Because everybody is creating knowledge bases and you think it is cool

2. Find good sources of information such as:

3. Define the subjects in the knowledge base.

You can use a tool such as Fact Guru's Text Analyzer to find terms.
You can also read your sources of information and make a list of all the terms that are used in special ways, or about which your information sources have a lot to say.
Decide on the extent of the knowledge base, what areas will it cover. You may have to cover a subset of the terms you have found. Perhaps you choose just the most important terms, or perhaps you focus on a particular topic.
If two terms are used for the same subject, decide which is to be the preferred term and list the other as a synonym. If a term is used with more than one meaning then you will have to number the different meanings. For example, you might have 'Post^1': A piece of wood sticking out of the ground, and 'Post^2', a service for exchanging mail. ^1 after the word indicates "meaning 1" and ^2 indicates "meaning 2".

4. Arrange the subjects in a kind of hierarchy or topic hierarchy

Use the Fact Guru Text Analyzer or examine your information sources to find how the subjects are related to each other.
Add new subjects as needed to group together categories of subjects
Make use of multiple inheritance as needed

5. Add facts for the subjects

Make "templates" in subjects high up in the hierarchy of facts that need to be filled in for subjects lower in the hierarchy. A template consists of a predicate but no complement. For example, in a hierarchy about cars you could introduce the predicates "has horsepower" and "manufacturer" at a high level in the hierarchy since all cars have these predicates. When you get to the subject "1995 Escort" you can fill in the values for the predicates.
Use the Fact Guru Text Analyzer or read your information sources to find facts

6. Check the knowledge base

Check that inherited facts still hold true in subconcepts
If identical or similar predicates appear in subjects with the same parent, move the predicate to their parent subject
Have the knowledge base reviewed by an expert in the area that the knowledge base is about