The Open Definition states that “knowledge is open if anyone is free to access (…)”. All people here, at OKFN and discusss.okfn.org, have some consensus about what is knowledge in the phrase. But, sometimes we need to define what we meaning with knowledge:
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for people “outside OKFN”:
- sometimes people ask for it, “what you mean with knowledge?”. Can we use some summarized standard answer? (eg. “see Wikipedia’s definition”).
- sometimes people use a knowledge view or concept that is in conflict with our intuition…
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for projects descriptions and project’s rationale: sometimes we need less informal view of knowledge, to show concrete and less subjective aims.
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for algorithms, tool design, or result statistis analisys and quantifications: we need an operational definition of knowledge. For example, the OpenDefinition also use the term “item or piece of knowledge”, but it is not obvious neither operable.
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for discussions inside OKFN: with a reference-definition we can reduce friction of individual views, and to sinalize/understand when using the term knowledge in a non-standard way.
I am imagining something less ambitious, and supposing that we not need a mathematical model or a big consensual framework… A reference-definition may be only an internal semantic reference.