| Luís Moniz Pereira Universidade Nova de Lisboa Portugal |
| Editor: Enrico Pontelli |
I fully support Bob’s wailing call about
the wikipedia.
Indeed, our own students, potential or
otherwise, will browse it for quick access to the topics and concepts central
to Logic Programming, the enveloping layers built around them, plus subsequent
and current developments and applications, not to mention pointers to important
topical bibliography, and a number of historical timelines.
Furthermore, the multitude and diversity of
areas of interest in Logic Programming, and their continuing development, make
it difficult for the student, as well as the teacher, to rely on any single or
small number of text books. These have trouble in keeping pace with the field themselves.
Accordingly, the wikipedia appears as the
natural place for our community to store, and continuously ameliorate, our own
long and sprawling contribution to Computer Science and AI. And moreover to
secure our own scientific investment, as well as responsibility, in its
continuation, both as individuals and as a specialized and organized
international community, about which natural expectations arise from the
scientific community at large.
The benefits to be reaped by a pro-active stance on our part will far outweigh the effort to jointly promote a more precise and clearer picture of Logic Programming. It will help us stake our claims and defend our ground within Computer Science and AI; it will foster the attraction of researchers to our field; it will make it more attractive to students; and it will benefit our own teaching and research efforts via a common trustworthy knowledge repository. No doubt, it is a win-win case.