The author carried out an ethnographic study of Czech Wikipedia in which he mapped human and non-human actors involved in the creation of an internet encyclopedia. As part of this process, he himself became one of the users and reflected how authorship, collective compiling of meanings, and supervision are constructed.

Das DBpedia-Projekt extrahiert zweimal pro Jahr RDF-Datensätze aus den semi-\\strukturierten Datensätzen Wikipedias. DBpedia soll nun auf ein Release-Modell umgestellt werden welches einen Release-Zyklus mit bis zu zwei vollständigen DBpedia Datensätzen pro Monat unterstützt. Dies ist mit der momentanen Geschwindigkeit des Extraktionsprozesses nicht möglich. Eine Verbesserung soll durch eine Parallelisierung mithilfe von Apache Spark erreicht werden. Der Fokus dieser Arbeit liegt auf der effizienten lokalen Nutzung Apache Sparks zur parallelen Verarbeitung von großen, semi-strukturierten Datensätzen. Dabei wird eine Implementierung der Apache Spark gestützten Extraktion vorgestellt, welche eine ausreichende Verringerung der Laufzeit erzielt. Dazu wurden grundlegende Methoden der komponentenbasierten Softwareentwicklung angewendet, Apache Sparks Nutzen für das Extraction-Framework analysiert und ein Überblick über die notwendigen Änderungen am Extraction-Framework präsentiert.

This report deals with the development of the historical maps web application for a company that works to preserve the cultural heritage of old maps. The goal of the project has been to create a proof of concept for a web application that allows the user to view and interact with historical maps. As well as taking part in the history and facts behind the maps, areas and points of interest within the maps. Work on the application has begun with the foundational design, such as flowchart, mood board and design sketches for the application. Based on these, a proof of concept is developed in the form of an interactive web application written in React with additional libraries such as Materials UI for user interface and Leaflet for interactive map functions. For facts content, fetch calls are made to the Wikipedia API. Trade-offs have had to be made regarding implemented functionality in this first version of the web application, in order to represent how the interactiveness with the maps can work while also demonstrating potential future functionality. The finished application achieves the purpose of the assignment as proof of concept. Interactivity in the maps and connections between the maps are implemented, along with static elements that exists to represent future possibilities. Information and facts about areas of interest and points of interest are retrieved from Wikipedia through the API. / Rapporten avhandlar utvecklingen av webbapplikationen Historical Maps till ett bolag som arbetar med att bevara kulturarvet kring gamla kartor. Målet med projektet har varit att skapa en proof of concept för en webbapplikation som låter användaren ta del av och interagera med historiska kartor. Samt att ta del av historia och fakta bakom kartorna, områden och intressepunkter. Arbetet med applikationen har inletts med att ta fram underlag som flödesschema, moodboard och designskisser för applikationen. Utifrån dessa utvecklas en proof of concept i form utav en interaktiv webbapplikation skriven i React med tillägg som Materials UI för användargränssnitt samt Leaflet för interaktiva kartfunktioner. För faktainnehåll görs fetch-anrop till Wikipedias API. Avvägningar har fått göras vad gäller implementerad funktionalitet i denna första version av webbapplikationen, för att på ett rättvist sätt kunna representera hur interaktiviteten med kartorna kan fungera och samtidigt påvisa potentiell framtida funktionalitet. Den färdiga applikationen uppnår uppdragets syfte som proof of concept. Interaktivitet i kartorna och kopplingar mellan kartorna är implementerad, tillsammans med statiska element som finns på plats för att representera framtida möjligheter. Information och fakta om intressanta områden och intressepunkter hämtas från Wikipedia genom API.

This thesis offers new input in the field of generating epithets to aid the comprehension of Swedish texts. For whatever reason, a reader might find certain words in a text difficult to understand. For example, they may never have come across the term moussaka before; however, by the simple expedient of assigning an explanatory epithet – in this case, “the dish” moussaka – they can hopefully continue reading uninterrupted. To do this, obscure phrases are identified and extracted based on word class, shallow token features and the Pareto Principle. An algorithm then extracts appropriate epithets for each word using the Wikipedia categorisation system. Although the algorithm developed for the study achieved underwhelming results when extracting obscure phrases, it did prove excellent at assigning appropriate epithets to nouns and proper nouns. With further research, this process can hopefully be utilised as a tool for improving the readability of any text.

Die Wikipedia ist als eine der umfangreichsten Enzyklopädien und meistbesuchten Internetseiten dieser Welt ein sehr erfolgreiches Kulturphänomen der Gegenwart. Wikipedianer, die Autorinnen und Autoren der Online-Enzyklopädie, erscheinen auf den ersten Blick als Paradoxon einer Wissensgesellschaft, in der Wissen in Form geistigen Eigentums eine zentrale Ressource ökonomischer Verwertung darstellt. Wer sind diese freiwilligen Autoren, wer schreibt die Wikipedia? Ausgehend vom kultur- und kommunikationshistorischen Kontext der Wikipedia versucht diese Magisterarbeit durch Interviews mit den aktivsten Wikipedianern innerhalb der deutschsprachigen Version der Online-Enzyklopädie die bisherige Forschung aus kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive zu ergänzen. In insgesamt 10 Interviews mit einem biografisch-narrativen und einem themenzentrierten Teil werden unterschiedliche Dimensionen subjektiver Erfahrung im Umgang mit der Online-Enzyklopädie herausgearbeitet. Die spezifischen Merkmale von Online-Interviews in Form von Chats oder Instant Messaging werden dabei mit ihren Vor- und Nachteilen dargestellt. Durch die Rekonstruktion der Aneignungs-, Identifikations- und Imaginationsprozesse und der damit verbundenen subjektiven Theorien wird der komplexe Zusammenhang zwischen der Biografie und der Art und Weise deutlich, wie die Wikipedia in die Vorstellungs- und Lebenswelt ihrer Autoren integriert ist. Durch eine vergleichende Analyse der gefundenen Logiken der Beschäftigung mit der Wikipedia deuten sich verschiedene Typen von Wikipedianern an: Bei Wikipedianern, die sich als Mitglieder der Open-Content-Community verstehen, steht das zivilgesellschaftliche Engagement für freies Wissen im Vordergrund. Bildungsbürgern und Enzyklopädisten geht es bei der Wikipedia vor allem um Bildung und bei Spielern um Unterhaltung und Spaß.

Climate change is one of the greatest threats to humanity, and yet society is unable to agree on its existence, causes and mitigation actions. This controversy in society manifests in all areas of public life including online channels. Wikipedia serves as a source of information not just for individuals, but also for search engines and artificial intelligence. Studying the climate change controversy on Wikipedia could provide insights that help to understand the controversy, and bolster the efforts in finding are solution for the controversy. With this aim, the edit histories of 86 pages related to climate change, their talk pages, as well as three baselines pages and their talk pages were collected from the English language Wikipedia, and analysed using Python for data extraction, manipulation and formatting, and R for data processing and analysis, data visualisation and significance testing. The statistical analyses of the different traces in the edit histories revealed interesting patterns of expression of the controversy. In addition, the statistical analyses hinted at several differences in the ways that editors on controversial pages differ from editors on non-controversial pages, thus showing an effect of controversy on Wikipedia and its culture .A detailed examination of the climate change pages showed that the controversy in Wikipedia traces affects the metadata of articles, thus identifying such articles to the casual reader. The novel method used in this study identified several new indicators of controversy.

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During the last two decades, Wikipedia’s multiple language versions managed to become editable forms of knowledge source, publicly available, which deal both, with non-typical knowledge dissemination and knowledge production, thanks to visitors’ viewership and active users/Wikipedians visitation/viewership and voluntary contribution, respectively. This dissertation investigates the function of recent viewership and editing in Wikipedia in Greek (WiG) and Bulgarian Language (WiB), by visitors and active users/Wikipedians (G-Wiks and B-Wiks), respectively, with respect to the issue of knowledge production (including reproduction) in the broader spectrum of Epistemology. Data and metadata analyzed in the dissertation were released/available as digital footprints from Wikimedia’s Common area and a third-party source (WikiShark). A recent snapshot of each of the above language versions of Wikipedia’s (WiG and WiB) activity, both individually and comparatively, proved that visitors have a specific pattern in both language versions in timeline, are relatively many compared to the number of their own language active users/Wikipedians (G-Wiks and B-Wiks). G-Wiks and B-Wiks, functioning as digitally enabled social networks (DESN), seem to deal more with editing, instead of content creation. From further content analysis of G-Wiks comments in discussion, it seems that editing process is not without tension or toxification; in their attempt to result after discussion in a meaningful Neutral Point of Views (NPOV) content of WiG. Moreover, thanks to many contemporary activities, G-Wiks DESN seems to open floor and facilitate/educate youth to become new members of WiG, through webinars, Editathons, and contests, aiming to result in further intentional, purposeful, and useful, collaborative knowledge production in the digital information pace, during this so-called Information Era.