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

Source of version: 2 (current)

!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.