Berkeley Open System for Skill Aggregation (BOSSA)

T(DesignDocument)?

BOSSA is a software infrastructure for creating projects that use skills or knowledge of large numbers of volunteers, via the Internet, to accomplish a set of tasks.

BOSSA is designed to accommodate a wide range of tasks. In particular:

• Tasks may be short (performed on a single web page) are may involve running separate programs and take several weeks.
• Tasks may be performed by a single user or by a group of cooperating users.
• Tasks may be automatically validated, or may require validation by comparing multiple instances.

BOSSA uses BOINC Basics, and designed to be used together with BOLT.

Abstractions

A BOSSA project has one or more skill apps. For each skill app and each user, BOSSA maintains skill estimate, an estimate of the user's skill at that task. This is maintained in the user's project-specific XML document. Normally it's a number in [0..1], and it's initially zero.

Normally each skill app has an associated BOLT course, and the skill estimate is maintained on the basis of the user's interaction with that course. However, a project can maintain the skill app using any other mechanism.

Each skill app has a dynamic set of skill tasks. Each one has an associated XML document, typically describing its parameters or input files.

Each skill task has a set of task instances. Each one represents a copy of the task, either in progress or completed. Each instance is assigned either to a user or to a team.