Model-aware Wiki analysis tools: the case of HistoryFlow

Wikis are becoming mainstream. Studies confirm how wikis are finding their way into organizations. This paper focuses on requirements for analysis tools for corporate wikis. Corporate wikis differ from their grow-up counterparts such as Wikipedia. First, they tend to be much smaller. Second, they require analysis to be customized for their own domains. So far, most analysis tools focus on large wikis where handling efficiently large bulks of data is paramount. This tends to make analysis tools access directly the wiki database. This binds the tool to the wiki engine, hence, jeopardizing customizability and interoperability. However, corporate wikis are not so big while customizability is a desirable feature. This change in requirements advocates for analysis tools to be decoupled from the underlying wiki engines. Our approach argues for characterizing analysis tools in terms of their abstract analysis model (e.g. a graph model, a contributor model). How this analysis model is then map into wiki-implementation terms is left to the wiki administrator. The administrator, as the domain expert, can better assess which is the right terms/granularity to conduct the analysis. This accounts for suitability and interoperability gains. The approach is borne out for HistoryFlow, an IBM tool for visualizing evolving wiki pages and the interactions of multiple wiki authors.