Evaluating the Ontology underlying sMail - the Conceptual Framework for Semantic Email Communication

Abstract

The lack of structure in the content of email messages makes it very hard for data channelled between the sender and the recipient to be correctly interpreted and acted upon. As a result, the purposes of messages frequently end up not being fulfilled, prompting prolonged communication and stalling the disconnected workflow that is characteristic of email. This problem could be partially solved by extending the current email model to support light-weight semantics pertaining to the intents of the sender and the expectations from the recipient(s), thus leaving no room for ambiguity. Semantically-aware email clients will then be able to support the user with the workflow of email-generated tasks. In line with this thinking, we present the sMail Conceptual Framework. At its core, this framework has an Email Speech Act Model. Given this model, email content can be categorized into a set of speech acts, each carrying specific expectations. In this paper we present and discuss the methodology and results of this model?s statistical evaluation. By performing the same evaluation on another existing model, we demonstrate our model?s higher sophistication. After careful observations, we perform changes to the model and subsequently accommodate the changes in the revised sMail Conceptual Framework.

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