Inconsistency resolution in online databases

Shared online databases allow community members to collaboratively maintain knowledge. Collaborative editing though inevitably leads to inconsistencies as different members enter erroneous data or conflicting opinions. Ideally community members should be able to see and resolve these inconsistencies in a collaborative fashion. However most current online databases do not support inconsistency resolution. Instead they try to by-pass the problem by either ignoring inconsistencies and treating data as if they were not conflicting or by requiring inconsistencies to be resolved outside the system. To address this limitation, we propose Ricolla; an online database system that, by treating inconsistencies as first-class citizens, supports a natural workflow for the management of conflicting data. The system captures inconsistencies (so that community members can easily inspect them) and remains fully functional in their presence, thus enabling inconsistency resolution in an ¿as-you-go¿ fashion. Moreover it supports several schemes for the resolution of inconsistencies, allowing among others users to collaboratively resolve certain conflicts while disagreeing on others.