Preface for the Third Edition - Read

344 B. Concepts and Theories
distribution: the distribution process means that knowledge is pushed from one
peer to a certain group of other peers who can decide whether to accept the
offered knowledge element(s) into their own knowledge bases.
search: a search process can involve an individual’s personal knowledge base as
well as all the portions of other peers’ knowledge bases (1) to which access has
been granted and (2) which are accessible at the period of time when the search
is performed.
feedback: individuals can get feedback on their knowledge from any other peer
who was granted access to that knowledge.
In many organizations, specific KM roles, such as a subject matter specialist or a
knowledge (base) administrator, are established in order to e.g., collect, review,
value, organize, store, refine or distribute knowledge that can then be reused by
knowledge workers. In the ideal architecture of a peer-to-peer KMS shown in
Figure B-61, these special roles are visualized by so-called “super peers”.
Generally, super peers provide the same functionality as peers do. Every peer
may act as a super peer and provide services of a subject matter specialist for a certain
(set of) topic(s). The differences are that super peers also provide quality management
to the distributed KMS architecture, improve performance of the network,
increase accessibility of the workspaces and aid collaboration between the peers.
Thus, super peers might provide a (large!) knowledge base that acts as a “knowledge
cache” for a certain network segment. This reduces network traffic when
peers from the same network segment repeatedly access certain knowledge elements
from other peers in other segments. Specifically, super peers might provide
the following services:
synchronization: peers that sometimes work offline might subscribe to synchronization
services offered by a super peer and thus improve their share in a peerto-peer
KMS and at the same time improve their network visibility even though
they might be sometimes unavailable.
submission: also, a submission process might be institutionalized by which
every peer can push knowledge towards a subject matter specialist or knowledge
base administrator respectively in order to get it reviewed, commented and, if
accepted, get its quality certified. Possibly, meta-data on the knowledge element
is also organized as part of the collection of (links to) knowledge elements that
is administrated by the subject matter specialist.
integration: super peers might also establish a joint effort to provide a standardized
taxonomy or ontology of the knowledge domains that they are involved in
and thus contribute to the integration of the diverse knowledge bases connected
in the distributed KMS architecture.
Consequently, super peers ideally are powerful machines with abundant
resources, a fast connection to the network and always online. Figure B-62 shows
the architecture of a peer and a super peer in detail.
Both architectures basically consist of the same layers as the architecture of centralized
knowledge management systems, but lack a centralized knowledge struc-