The document outlines the history and developments of the Vienna History Wiki from its inception in 2012 to its current status in 2023. Key milestones include the launch of an online encyclopedia, citizen participation, enhancements in technology and community engagement, and recognition as a trusted source for authority files. The document also highlights future goals and ongoing improvements to enrich the historical content available to the public.

1. 10 Years Vienna History Wiki
Christoph Sonnlechner
Vienna City Archives
Katharina Prager
Vienna City Library
Bernhard Krabina
KMA Knowledge Management Associates
MediaWiki Users & Developers Conference Fall 2024, Vienna

2. Six-volume encyclopedia "Historisches Lexikon Wien" 1992-2004
edited by Felix Czeike
Last volume (6)
was an update
volume, released 2004
„The Czeike“: Historical Encyclopedia of Vienna

3. • Vienna City Archives
• Vienna City Library
• Department for Communication
• Department for IT
• OCR reading of the encyclopedia
• Contract with the publisher
Orac/Kremayr & Scheriau
2012: Idea of an Online Encyclopedia

4. • Bernhard Krabina sets up the
framework for the wiki
• 15 students build the articles from
OCR documents
• a first editorial team of 6 members
is formed
2013: Semantic MediaWiki

5. Original ↓ Wiki→

6. From now on, citizens
can participate!
September 2014: Going Live!

7. October 2014: SMWCon in Vienna

8. • More sources are
incorporated,
e. g. history of > 1.000
buildings
• Curated thematic clusters
2015 – 2018 (1)

9. 2015-2018 (2)
• First film clips embedded
• Image annotations
• Map portal

10. • New URL
www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at
• Responsive skin
• New category „Rememberance“
2018: Relaunch

11. Other Highlights
Purchasing power calculator Address portal
For 1 Guilder in 1440
you would get 11.2 days
of work
← Objects that are/were here
← Nearby addresses

12. Memorial Day Index
on paper/CD-ROM online since 2016

13. • Lookup Data from GND and
Wikidata > Values are
suggested, have to be
checked.
• 2021: The Vienna History Wiki
is recognized as a source for
the Integrated Authority File
(GND) and Wikidata (P7842)
• 2023: updated relations
ontology for persons
Authority Data – GND and Wikidata IDs

14. During the Pandemic
• 2020: Form for image uploads
with metadata for more than
10,000 images
• 2022: “Wiki Walks”: exploring
Vienna

15. • Aligning forces of all
historians at the archive and
the library to assemble
articles into a periodization
of Vienna’s history
Portals for Time Periods

16. Kraus Portal
• Continuously working
on the wiki community
• Integrating research

17. • Perfect use case for Semantic MediaWiki
• RDF dumps: https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/RDF
• Open Data: https://www.data.gv.at/katalog/de/dataset/wien-
geschichte-wiki
• Heavy use of Schema.org and other vocabularies:
https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Wien_Geschichte_Wiki/Ont
ologie
• Hosted by IT department of the City of Vienna
• Regular external security audits
Technology and Research

18. • Improvements to several result formats
(filtered, datatables)
• Improvements to SMW core
• Contributions to PageForms
• Extension:Modern Timeline
• Widgets Juxtapose, Timeline
• Bug reports
Contributions to Open Source

19. Visits per month
0
100 000
200 000
300 000
400 000
500 000
600 000
700 000
800 000
900 000
1 000 000
09/14
12/14
03/15
06/15
09/15
12/15
03/16
06/16
09/16
12/16
03/17
06/17
09/17
12/17
03/18
06/18
09/18
12/18
03/19
06/19
09/19
12/19
03/20
06/20
09/20
12/20
03/21
06/21
09/21
12/21
03/22
06/22
09/22
12/22
03/23
06/23
09/23
Vienna Histroy Wiki: visits per month
by Oktober 2023, Source: Logfile analsyis with Webalizer V. 2.23, and siteimprove
new
measurement
change of URL

20. User survey 2019

21. • Extensions: percentage change of new entries related to the
original Czeike entries
• Recency: average number of months from the date a page was
last edited to the time of the analysis (October 28, 2021).
• Subcat: number of subcategories of the respective main
category
Knowledge graph analysis

22. Journal of Web Semantics
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.websem.2022.100771

23. Looking forward to the next 10 years!
Christoph Sonnlechner
Vienna City Archives, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q110403260
Katharina Prager
Vienna City Library, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharina_Prager, Q86433960
Bernhard Krabina
KMA Knowledge Management Associates, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q73487199