https://www.insight-centre.org/content/slua-towards-semantic-linking-users-actions-crowdsourcing Presented at ISWC 2013 Abstract: Recent advances in web technologies allow people to help solve complex problems by performing online tasks in return for money, learning, or fun. At present, human contribution is limited to the tasks defined on individual crowdsourcing platforms. Furthermore, there is a lack of tools and technologies that support matching of tasks with appropriate users, across multiple systems. A more explicit capture of the semantics of crowdsourcing tasks could enable the design and development of matchmaking services between users and tasks. The paper presents the SLUA ontology that aims to model users and tasks in crowdsourcing systems in terms of the relevant actions, capabilities, and re-wards. This model describes different types of human tasks that help in solving complex problems using crowds. The paper provides examples of describing users and tasks in some real world systems, with SLUA ontology.

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SLUA: TOWARDS SEMANTIC LINKING OF USERS WITH
ACTIONS IN CROWDSOURCING
Umair ul Hassan, Sean O’Riain, Edward Curry
INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics
National University of Ireland, Galway
1st International Workshop on Crowdsourcing the Semantic Web,
CrowdSem’13, Sydney, Australia

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Paper Overview
• Motivation
– Multiple crowdsourcing platforms
– Lack of tools for finding tasks
– Querying across platforms for skills and knowledge of workers
• Problem
– Enabling interoperability across crowdsourcing platforms
– Support users in their search for crowd tasks
– Enable task and user matching services
• Contribution
– An ontology for describing crowd sourced tasks and users with regard to
human capabilities, actions and rewards
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Agenda
• Motivation
– Crowdsourcing Landscape
– Semantic Heterogeneity
• Challenges
• SLUA Ontology
• Examples
• Summary
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Crowdsourcing Landscape
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Crowdsourcing Landscape
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Heterogeneity
Tasks Human Actions
Required
Capabilities
Rewards
Wikipedia Create Content
Edit Content
Moderate Content
Write text
Include references
Highlight mistakes
Domain Knowledge
Writing
Research
Quora Ask Questions
Answer Questions
Write text Domain Knowledge Reputation
Amazon
Mechanical
Turk
Micro Tasks Transcribe,
Translate,
Categorize, etc.
Various Capabilities Money
TaskRabbit Physical Tasks Collect Item
Deliver Item
Shop Item, etc.
Various Capabilities Money
Microtask Form Filling
Scan Correction
Data Verification
Play games Online gaming Fun
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Challenges
• Difficult to interoperate across crowdsourcing
systems and platforms
– e.g. searching for appropriate workers on
StackExchange for Wiki editing tasks
• Variations of data semantics across systems and
platforms
– Different APIs used by current marketplaces
• Existing Taxonomies
– Categorize crowdsourcing platforms instead of tasks
– Do not consider human factors such as actions,
capabilities, motivation.
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Heterogeneous Crowds
• Multiple requesters, tasks, workers, platform
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Cyber Physical
Social System
Tasks Workers
Collaborative
Data Curation
Tasks Workers
Task Management
Middleware

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Proposed Model
• An common model for describing tasks in
crowdsourcing (CS) is required
• Methodology
– Enumerate similar terms on crowdsourcing platforms
– Define the main concept in each group of terms
– Compare with existing ontologies
– Define core classes and their relationships
– Extend core classes with subclasses
– Create example instances
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Crowdsourcing Terminology
• Terms used for similar concepts in
crowdsourcing platforms
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Amazon
Mechanical
Turk
Mobileworks Shorttask CrowdFlower
Task HIT Task ShortTask Microtask
User Worker
Requester
Worker
Developer
Solver
Seeker
Contributor
Customer
Capability Qualification Filter
Reward Payment Payment Reward Payment

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Model Requirements
• Required concepts
– Task: A unit of work to be performed by people in the
crowd
– Action: The cognitive or psychomotor activity that
leads towards the completion of a task
– User: The human participant, commonly described as
“worker” in crowdsourcing marketplaces.
– Capability: The human ability, knowledge, or skill that
allows a user to perform the necessary actions for task
completion.
– Reward: A core concept to the motivation of people in
the crowd
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Existing Ontologies
Concept PIMO TMO HRM-O FOAF SIOC
Task Task Task
Action
User Person Job Seeker Person UserAccount
Reward Compensation
Reputation
Money Salary
Fun
Altruism
Learning
Capability
Location Location
Skill Skill
Knowledge
Ability Ability
Availability Interval
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Personal Information Management Ontology (PIMO)
Task Management Ontology (TMO)
Human Resource Management Ontology (HRM-O)
Friend of a Friend (FOAF)
Semantically Interlinked Online Communities (SIOC)

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SLUA Core
• Core classes and properties
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Reward
Action
Capability
User Task
offersearns
includesperforms
requirespossesses

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SLUA Sub-classes
• Capability
– The ability of people to do things - both the capacity
and the opportunities to do things.
– Main capabilities in literature
• Knowledge, Skill, Ability, and Others (e.g. Location,
Availability)
• Reward
– The benefit generated from the use of capability in
both labour market and non-labour market activities.
– Main rewards in literature
• Reputation, Money, Fun, Learning, Altruism or Social Good
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SLUA Ontology
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Reward
Action
Capability
User Task
offersearns
includesperforms
requirespossesses
Location Skill Knowledge Ability Availability
Reputation Money Fun Altruism Learning
subClassOf
subClassOf

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Example Task
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http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/
A3_road/tasks/1
slua:Task
Please consider adding full citations to
the Wikipedia article
:loc1
slua:Location
http://live.dbpedia.org/resou
rce/London
:knw1
slua:Knowledge
http://live.dbpedia.org/resou
rce/London
:rw1
slua:Reward
slua:Reputation
:ac1
slua:Action Wiki page edit
rdfs:label
rdfs:label
a
a
a
a
a
a
slua:offers
slua:inludes
slua:requires
slua:requires

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Example User
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/user/u0901> a slua:User .
faof:name "Umair ul Hassan";
slua:possess [
a slua:Location;
slua:locatedIn <http://live.dbpedia.org/resource/London> ];
slua:possess [
a slua:Knowledge;
slua:locatedIn <http://live.dbpedia.org/resource/Roads> ];
slua:earns [
a slua:Reputation;
slua:amount "4 star" ].
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Leveraging SLUA
• Task routing in heterogeneous crowdsourcing
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Cyber Physical
Social System
Tasks Workers
Collaborative
Data Curation
Tasks Workers
Worker
Profiling
Task
Modelling
Task Routing
Matching
Cold Start
Ordering
Infrastructure Services
Application Interface, User Interface, Identity Management, Notification Services
Task
Model
Capability
Model
Capability
Models Worker
Profiless
Worker
Profiles
Worker
Profiles

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Summary & Future Work
• SLUA is an initial step towards defining a light-
weight ontology for describing tasks, actions,
users, rewards, and capabilities in
crowdsourcing platforms
• Future plan
– Prototype based on SLUA for cross platform query
– Task routing system used match between tasks
and users with SLUA descriptors
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Further Reading
U. Ul Hassan, S. O’Riain, and E. Curry, “SLUA: Towards Semantic Linking of Users with Actions in
Crowdsourcing,” in 1st International Workshop on Crowdsourcing the Semantic Web, 2013.
http://deri.ie/users/umair-ul-hassan
20
International Workshop on “Crowdsourcing the Semantic Web”
Sydney, 21 October 2013