The Austrian way of Wiki(pedia)! - Development of a Structured Wiki-based Encyclopedia within a Local Austrian Context

Track: Wiki Track
Authors: Christoph Trattner, Ilire Hasani-Mavriqi, Denis Helic and Helmut Leitner

Abstract
Although the success of online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia
is indisputable, researchers have questioned usefulness of Wikipedia in educational settings. Problems such as copy&paste syndrome, unchecked quality, or fragmentation of knowledge have been recognized as serious drawbacks for a wide spread application of Wikipedia in universities or high schools. In this paper we present a Wiki-based encyclopedia called Austria-Forum that aims to combine openness and collaboration aspects of Wikipedia with approaches to build a structured, quality inspected, and context-sensitive online encyclopedia. To ensure tractability of the publishing process the system focuses on providing information within a local Austrian context. It is our experience that such an approach represents a first step of a proper application of online encyclopedias in educational settings.

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