Term-based architecture

In Knowledge Management, term-based architecture is a methodology for structuring a knowledge base in such a way that it remains clear and uncluttered as it scales. The premise is that, for any technical subject, the most basic and imperative form of knowledge that must exist is a richly-connected dictionary of the terms used to discuss that subject. Only when each term is well-defined in terms of other terms in the dictionary will the knowledge have the foundation necessary to grow without bound while avoiding clutter and ambiguity.

Term-based architecture is particularly effective in a medium that features hyperlinks. This way, the definition of each term can link to the other terms used in the definition, providing great ease of navigation by the reader.

History

Term-based architecture is not a new idea. It has been widely adopted by such knowledge base projects as Wikipedia and Wiktionary, and may be viewed as one reason for their success at growing while remaining organized and approachable.

Implementation

Term-based Knowledge Management works very well on a wiki, but the concepts can be applied to many different forms of knowledge base.