Structuring data, one web form at a time
Keywords: Linked Data, Data structuring, SKOS, Web data, editor
Promotors: Ben De Meester
Students: max 1
Problem
You know them. The free form web form fields. Things where you specify tags or genres when writing a book review.
You know what happens with those fields? They get dropped in a huge pile of similar-but-not-quite tags.
You know what happens with the systems needing to use those tags? They spend (literal) months to align them or build systems that can search over them.
Wouldn't it be amazing if you could gradually update those web form fields? Where you can add your own tags, use existing tags, create subtags, ... and make those tag lists reusable all over the web?
Goal
Design and implement a system that could be demonstrated, e.g., as a browser plug-in, where free-form text fields are gradually converted into selection boxes.
With each entry in the text field, the selection list gets refined.
By making use of web standards such as SKOS, you're not building this system for one specific free-form text field in one specific web page,
but you're building an interoperable system that works for any data, across any system, towards a global network of reusable tags.