Why Wikipedia is not enough

Presentation for VIPSIMilocer, December 31, 2011

Hermann Maurer

Professor at Graz University of Technology and Chair of Informatics Section of Academia Europaea

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Wikipedia: Valuable resource to get up-to-dateinformation

Available in many languagesEnglish: ~ 3,000.000 entriesGerman: ~1,500.000 entriesSerbian: ~ 150.000 entries

However, the entries in the Serbian Wikipedia Server do not (!) concentrate on Serbia and arequite incomplete.

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The majority of topics on the Serbian Wikipedia do not deal with Serbia(like the above) and are incomplete (links missing) as the red entriesshow.

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What we need in addition to potential Wikipediasare regional servers, or servers with a certain focus

--- emphasis on local history, achievements, featuresof nature, personalities, cities and villages,….--- concentration on items that do not obsolete fast--- new approaches to searching and preservation--- current main example: www.austria-forum.org

Regional servers:

Focus servers:--- emphasis on some cross section of our society--- new approaches to searching and preservation--- current main example: www.ae-info.org

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We now concentrate on some important points ofregional servers

(1) Information: Not one linearly ordered lexicographical collection, but structured in various collections (e.g. biographies, cities, architecture, rivers/lakes, etc.). Searching can be restricted to one of the categories (essential for full-text search). Also other navigational paradigms.

(3) Information can be searched by metadata and other criteria. The next page shows that if we are searching for someone whose name we don‘t know, but we know that he was born in Vienna (Wien), was working in physics (Physik) and died in Italy (Italien) the one person fitting the description, Ludwig Boltzman is indeed found

(2) Information is integrated (= pulled together from various sources semi-automatically)

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(4) There is often no absolute truth. Hence many topics deserve presentations from various points of view

(5) This necessitates to make sure that the source is always known: either name of author including CV, or the book or archive it comes from

(7) Updating is dangerous, because it destroys previous information and hence history. When e.g. an old building is „updated“ (rennovated) one cannot experience what it was like earlier. The same is true of information: We believe in preservation of information, allowing „time-travel“ by reading about e.g. Belgrade at various points in time. We show this on the next page with pictures taken of the main theater in Vienna in different years

(6) Entries from Wikipedias are welcome but have to be shown as such, have to be dated, and will be shown with new entry every year, preserving the preceding one

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Burgtheater Wien190019652000

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(8) In electronic corpora there is no need to restrict length(9) Books are not just source of information but there must be a way to incorporate them book-like: Web Books. They behave like printedbooks but also offer some new functions: links, bookmarks, …

10Clicking at book opens it. Then one can turn pages or jump to anarbitray page, but also one can create bookmarks or links

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This shows some bookmarks. This icon allows to switch to ordinary font. Clicking at one page, only that one is shown and one can thenzoom in (see next page)

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The enlarged picture. Note the field that allows full-text search!

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Publisher cooperate withthe Web Book concept:Since Web Books can only be read online theyhave noted that Web Books are not competitionbut advertisement for theprinted version. The bookshown still sells well inshops although it can befreely browsed on the Web.

14The feeling of reading a book is enhanced by showing page numbers and graphically number of pages before and after current one

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Note that this „book-feeling“is missing e.g. on kindle from Amazon, hence readingsuch kindle-books takes some getting used to!

Overall: Regional Forums should be easy to use, webelieve as combination ofWeb pages or when presented as book than withthe feeling of sort of a real book.

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Of course regional forums must also contain:--- movies / videoclips--- samples of music--- panoramic pictures / zooming of pictures--- maps--- animation / 3D models

Of course regional forums must also take care of:--- various tablets (from iPad to Samsung tablet)--- access by Smartphone--- access by visually handicapped

Of course regional forums must be include new technolgy:--- social netwworks--- definition of groups and access rights--- 3D screens when those are supported enough

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Summarizing:

We have to preserve the past and the present of countries and regions, and continue to do so, so that people today know what e.g. was important in the region 20, 30, 100,… years ago, but also in 2050 people will know about the region in 2030, etc.

This can only be done using modern SW technology and information from various sources, particularly in conjunction with existing organisations, archives, museums, libraries and publishers, and by tying in an acommunity. The task is particularly pressing in times of rapid change.

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Thanks for your attention!

A regional server:http://www.austria-forum.org

A focus server:http://www.ae-info.org

Let us make sure that all countries have aregional server!

hmaurer@iicm.edu www.iicm.edu/maurer