The Influence of Multilingualism and Mutual Intelligibility on Wikipedia Reading Behaviour: A Research Proposal

Given the important role of Wikipedia in our everyday lives, a better understanding of how language skills affect Wikipedia usage is needed. If content is not available in a reader’s native language or a language that she can readily understand, access barriers and knowledge gaps are created, threatening Wikimedia’s goal to create knowledge equity among all its projects and their consumers. This article argues for research on the effects of multilingualism and mutual intelligibility on Wikipedia reading behaviour, focusing on the Nordic countries, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Initial exploratory analysis shows that while residents of these countries use the native language editions quite frequently, they rely strongly on English Wikipedia, too. Research questions and methods for future work in this area are presented

Frauen in Rot: Ein Projekt zur Verringerung der Geschlechterkluft in der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia

Wikipedia weist einen Gender Bias auf. Dieser auf das Geschlecht bezogene Verzerrungsaspekt macht sich zum Beispiel daran fest, dass nur rund 17,5 % aller biografischen deutschsprachigen Wikipedia-Artikel Frauen behandeln. Das Projekt „Frauen in Rot“ möchte dies ändern. Dieses Reflexionspapier illustriert den Prozess, als Neuling auf Wikipedia einen Artikel zu schreiben und einen Beitrag zu diesem Projekt zu leisten

Information between Data and Knowledge: Information Science and its Neighbors from Data Science to Digital Humanities

Digital humanities as well as data science as neighboring fields pose new challenges and opportunities for information science. The recent focus on data in the context of big data and deep learning brings along new tasks for information scientist for example in research data management. At the same time, information behavior changes in the light of the increasing digital availability of information in academia as well as in everyday life. In this volume, contributions from various fields like information behavior and information literacy, information retrieval, digital humanities, knowledge representation, emerging technologies, and information infrastructure showcase the development of information science research in recent years. Topics as diverse as social media analytics, fake news on Facebook, collaborative search practices, open educational resources or recent developments in research data management are some of the highlights of this volume. For more than 30 years, the International Symposium of Information Science has been the venue for bringing together information scientists from the German speaking countries. In addition to the regular scientific contributions, six of the best competitors for the prize for the best information science master thesis present their work

Global Gender Differences in Wikipedia Readership

Wikipedia represents the largest and most popular source of encyclopedic knowledge in the world, aiming to provide equal access to information worldwide. From a global online survey of 65,031 readers of Wikipedia and their corresponding reading logs, we present first evidence of gender differences in Wikipedia readership and how they manifest in records of user behavior. More specifically we report that (1) women are underrepresented among readers of Wikipedia, (2) women view fewer pages per reading session than men do, (3) men and women visit Wikipedia for similar reasons, and (4) men and women exhibit specific topical preferences. Our findings lay the foundation for identifying pathways toward knowledge equity in the usage of online encyclopedic knowledge