Model of knowledge

From Wing Chun Reference

Generally speaking, Wing Chun Reference is a systematic description of Wing Chun practitioners as well as a number of other entities that are somehow related to the practitioners. The entities are divided into categories (represented by blue boxes) as on the following chart:

Each category has its own definition. Below follows a list of definitions for all entities in Wing Chun Reference:

• People - A person is someone who practices the art of Wing Chun.

• Biography facts - A biography fact is a fact, which can be described by one of the following sentences:

PERSON is born in PLACE on DATE.
PERSON moves to PLACE on DATE.
PERSON dies in PLACE on DATE.

• Learning facts - A learning fact is a fact, which can be described by the following sentence:

PERSON learns Wing Chun from TEACHER in PLACE/SCHOOL/ORGANIZATION from DATE to DATE.

• Teaching facts - A teaching fact is a fact, which can be described by the following sentence:

PERSON teaches Wing Chun in PLACE/SCHOOL/ORGANIZATION from DATE to DATE.

• Membership facts - A membership fact is a fact, which can be described by the following sentence:

PERSON is a member of ORGANIZATION from DATE to DATE.

• Places - A place is a geographical feature such as country, region, state, district, town, village, island, mountain, river etc. A place must be a feature that exists independently of Wing Chun - in other words it would still be there even if the art of Wing Chun had never developed.

• Organizations - An organization is a group of people engaged in any Wing Chun related activity. This category includes associations, museums, lineages as well as informal groups of Wing Chun practitioners.

• Schools - A school is a place, where classes of Wing Chun are/were taught on a regular basis.

• Exercises - An exercise is any physical exercise which helps develop Wing Chun concepts. This category includes forms, pair exercises, drills.

• Tools - A tool is a weapon or training equipment that is used in the art of Wing Chun.

• Concepts - A concept is an idea, body position, movement or technique that characterizes the art of Wing Chun.

• Books - A book is any printed or handwritten publication about Wing Chun.

• Videos - A video is an audiovisual work (like video tape, CD or DVD) that has been published.

• Web videos - A web video is a video available on YouTube service.

• Web links - A web link is a link to any Wing Chun related webpage available on the internet.

Each category has a number of fields describing it. The fields store specific and pre-defined type of information about the entity (for instance the category "People" has a field "is alive" with the values of "yes" and "no"). That way, information gets broken into small, easily arguable, objective chunks relating to each entity, which leaves little room for inputting unverifiable facts (like "X is the most advanced student of Y").

Wing Chun Reference permits to describe a number of properties and relations which exists among the above entities. Then software is used to analyse the information contained within the categories as well as the relations connecting the entities and to draw logical conclusions in an automated way. This way most of the work involved in retrieving the information is done by the computer instead of the user.