Knowledge Article
Curated, versioned articles that answer a defined question or resolve a known issue.
Bundle → Layer → Finding → Questions Filled
3 bundles · 3 layers · 5 findings · 10 questions
Content and scope What the article says and for whom.
Subject and audience
The question or issue the article addresses and its intended readers.
Covered issue
The problem, question or task the article answers.
- Which question or issue does this article answer?
- Which products, versions or situations is the answer valid for?
Audience and visibility
Who may read the article.
- Is the article for internal staff, partners or the public?
- Does it contain content that must not leave its stated audience?
Lifecycle and governance How the article is owned, reviewed and versioned.
Versions and review
Authorship, approval and review dates.
Current version
The published version with its author and approver.
- Which version is currently published, and who approved it?
- When is the next review due, and is it overdue?
Retirement
Whether the article is obsolete or superseded.
- Has the article been superseded or retired, and by what?
- Do links or tickets still point to the retired version?
Use and evidence How the article is used and whether it works.
Usage and feedback
Links to cases, ratings and corrections.
Usefulness
Evidence that the article resolves the issue it covers.
- How many cases were resolved by linking this article?
- Which feedback or reported errors are still open?
Classifiers Filled
- Family
- World Models
- Category
- Information and virtual systems
- Entry kind
- standalone-mm
- Navigation path
- NAV.INF.KNW.ART
- Domain
- INF.KNW.ART
- Industry
- Cross-industry
- Tags
- knowledgearticleinf.knw.art
What it is Filled
A knowledge article is a curated, versioned piece of explanatory content that answers a defined question or describes how to resolve a known issue, kept in a knowledge base with an owner, an audience and a review cycle. It is narrower than a document in general and differs from a scholarly publication, a formal standard or a single concept definition.
Why it exists Filled
Curated, versioned articles that answer a defined question or resolve a known issue.
Distinguishing features Filled
- Answers a defined question or issue for a stated audience, unlike a general document or record.
- Curated and reviewed on a cycle, unlike a forum post or chat message.
- Explains and instructs; a formal norm belongs to the policy or standard models and a term to concept models.
- Instructions written for an AI agent to execute are agent skills, not knowledge articles for people.
What robots and AI may and may not do Filled
Must not
- Publish or change an approved article without the review its knowledge base requires.
- Show an internal article to an audience it is not meant for.
- Present a retired or superseded article as current guidance.
- Invent steps or facts not found in the article when citing it.
- Remove an author's attribution.
Only with a human decision
- Approving an article for publication.
- Retiring an article that other processes or customers rely on.
May
- Search, cite and link articles when answering questions or resolving cases.
- Draft new articles or updates for human review.
- Report articles that are outdated, contradictory or overdue for review.
- Record which article version an answer relied on.
Moral aspects Filled
- Wrong or outdated guidance spreads quickly when agents reuse it at scale.
- Articles can hold personal or confidential data copied from cases.
- Authors' work should be credited even in internal knowledge bases.
Who is affected
- Readers relying on the guidance
- Article authors and reviewers
- Customers whose cases inform articles
Owners Filled
Steward
The knowledge manager or content owner who answers for the accuracy and review of articles in a knowledge base.
Master systems
- Knowledge base
- Content management system
Links to other meta-models Filled
related
- wm-rec-001-document-record - A knowledge article is a curated kind of document.
references
- wm-act-021-service-case-ticket - Articles are linked to the cases they help resolve.
neighbor
- wm-knw-005-agent-skill-instruction - Agent skills are instructions for machines, articles guidance for people.
What else AI and robots need to interact with it Filled
Identity and identifiers required Filled
- Identified by the knowledge base's article identifier and version number.
- Public articles may also have a stable URL.
Direct properties not applicable Not applicable
Not applicable
The subject is an institutional or informational record with no physical quantities of its own.
Recognition optional Filled
- Marked by a title, a stated question or issue, a body of guidance, an owner and a review date.
- Often confused with a policy, a user manual, a forum thread or a ticket comment.
Capabilities and actions required Filled
- Can be drafted, reviewed, published, updated and retired as versions.
- Can be linked to cases, products and concepts, and rated by readers.
Hazards and failure modes required Filled
- Outdated steps that cause errors or data loss when followed.
- Leakage of confidential content to the wrong audience.
Standards and interfaces required Filled
- Knowledge base search and retrieval APIs.
- schema.org Article and TechArticle for public pages.
- OASIS DITA for structured topic-based content.
Context of use required Filled
- Used in customer support, IT service management and internal documentation.
- Increasingly used as grounding content for AI assistants.
Sources Filled
- Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) practices, Consortium for Service Innovation
- Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), OASIS
- schema.org TechArticle type, schema.org
Open questions
- Planned model: boundary questions, research and every section remain to be written.
Machine files
Provenance
planned (registry candidate) · todo
Built from: models/runtime-index.json, ver-cy/world-models/card-supplements/wm-knw-004-knowledge-article.json
Planned entry, hidden from the catalogue until researched.