Reliable improvement for collective intelligence on Thai herbal information

Abstract

Creating a system for collecting herbal information on the Internet, is not a trivial task. With the conventional techniques, it is hard to find the way which the experts can build a self-sustainable community for exchanging their knowledge. In this work, the Knowledge Unifying Initiator for Herbal Information (KUIHerb) is used as a platform for building a web community for collecting the intercultural herbal knowledge with the concept of a collective intelligence. With this system, images of herbs, herbal vocabulary and medicinal usages can be collected from this system. Due to the diversities of herbs, geographic distribution and their applications, one problem is the reliability of herbal information which is collected from this system. In this paper, three mechanisms are utilized for improving reliability of the system: (1) information for an herb is divided into several topics. Contributors could select some topics which they are expertise, (2) a voting system is applied and the standard source members (SSMs) are able to contribute their knowledge on text information, (3) a voting system, keywords and comments are implemented for controlling quality and reliable of images of an herb. With these mechanisms, herbal information on KUIHerb is more accurate and reliable. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.