Editorial: the Sisyphus-VT initiative

Abstract This special issue contains results of the second “Sisyphus ” study carried out in the knowledge acquisition community in the period 1992–1995. The Sisyphus initiative arose at the 1990 European Knowledge Acquisition Workshop in Driebergen (The Netherlands). To explain the rationale behind this initiative it is necessary to give a brief synopsis of the recent history of the knowledge-engineering field.