Reflections on a Wikipedia assignment – Reproductive Medicine

Reproductive Medicine undergraduates – September 2016 (CC-BY-SA)

This was originally posted on Ewan McAndrew’s blog where he writes about his role as the University of Edinburgh’s Wikimedian in Residence

Wikipedia as an important source of health information and not medical advice.

“The Internet, especially Wikipedia, had proven its importance in everyday life. Even the medical sector is influenced by Wikipedia’s omnipresence. It has gained considerable attention among both healthcare professionals and the lay public in providing medical information. Patients rely on the information they obtain from Wikipedia before deciding to seek professional help. As a result, physicians are confronted by a professional dilemma as patients weigh information provided by medical professionals against that on Wikipedia, the new provider of health information….

We state that Wikipedia should not be viewed as being inappropriate for its use in medical education. Given Wikipedia’s central role in medical education as reported in our survey, its integration could yield new opportunities in undergraduate education. High-quality medical education and sustainability necessitates the need to know how to search and retrieve unbiased, comprehensive, and reliable information. Students should therefore be advised in reflected information search and encouraged to contribute to the “perpetual beta” improving Wikipedia’s reliability. Therefore, we ask for inclusion in medical curricula, since guiding students’ use and evaluation of information resources is an important role of higher education. It is of utmost importance to establish information literacy, evidence-based practices, and life-long learning habits among future physicians early on, hereby contributing to medical education of the highest quality.
Accordingly, this is an appeal to see Wikipedia as what it is: an educational opportunity. This is an appeal to academic educators for supplementing Wikipedia entries with credible information from the scientific literature. They also should teach their protégés to obtain and critically evaluate information as well as to supplement or correct entries. Finally, this is an appeal to medical students to develop professional responsibility while working with this dynamic resource. Criticism should be maintained and caution exercised since every user relies on the accuracy, conscientiousness, and objectivity of the contributor.”(Herbert et al, BMC Medical Education, 2015)

Reproductive Medicine Wikipedia assignment at Edinburgh University – September 2016

Reproductive Medicine undergraduates – collaborating to create Wikipedia articles.

In September 2016, Reproductive Biology Honours students undertook a group research project to research, in groups of 4–5 students with a tutor, a term from reproductive biomedicine that was not yet represented on Wikipedia. All 38 were trained to edit Wikipedia and they worked collaboratively both to undertake the research and produce the finished written article. The assignment developed the students’ information literacy, digital literacy, collaborative working, academic writing & referencing and ability to communicate to an audience. The end result was 8 new articles on reproductive medicine which enriches the global open knowledge community and will be added to & improved upon long after they have left university creating a rich legacy to look back upon.

One of the new articles, high-grade serous carcinoma, was researched and written by 4th year student, Áine Kavanagh.

Rather than a writing an assignment for an audience of one (the course tutor) and never read again, Aine’s article can be viewed, built on and expanded by an audience of millions. Since creating the article in September 2016, the article has now been viewed 6,993 times.

Since September 2016 the article has amassed nearly 7,000 views, and growing day by day.

Guest post:

Reflections on a Wikipedia assignment

BY ÁINE KAVANAGH.
Reproductive Medicine students – September 2016

The process of writing a Wikipedia article involved me trying to answer the questions I was asking myself about the topic. What was it? Why should I care about it? What does it mean to society? I also needed to make the answers to those questions clear to other people who can’t see inside my head.

It then moved onto questions I thought other people might ask about the topic. Writing for Wikipedia is really an exercise in empathy and perspective. Who else is going to want to know about this and what might they be interested in about it?

Is what I’m writing accessible and understandable? Am I presenting it in a useful way? It’s an incredibly public piece of writing which is only useful if it serves the public, so trying to put yourself in the frame of someone who’s not you reading what you’ve written is important (and possibly the most difficult part).

It’s also about co-operation from the get-go. You can’t post a Wikipedia article and allow no one else to edit it. You are offering something up to the world. You can always come back to it, but you can never make it completely your own again. The beauty of Wikipedia is in groupthink, in the crowd intelligence it facilitates, but this means shared ownership, which can be hard to get your head around at first.

It’s a unique way of writing, and some tips for other students starting out on a Wikipedia project is to not be intimidated. Wikipedia articles in theory can be indefinitely long and dense and will be around for an indefinitely long time, so writing a few hundred words can seem like adding a grain of sand to a desert. But if the information is not already there then you are contributing – and what is Wikipedia if not just a big bunch of contributions?

There’s also the fear that editors already on Wikipedia will swoop down and denounce your article as completely useless – but the beauty of storing information is that you can never really have too much of it. There’s no-one who can truly judge what is and isn’t worthy of knowing*.

*There’s no-one who can judge what’s worth knowing, but the sum of human knowledge needs to be organised, and so there are actually guidelines as to what a Wikipedia article is (objective account of a thing) and is not (platform for self-promotion).

#WMUKED17 – Wikimedia UK Education Summit: a roundup

By Lucy Crompton-Reid, Wikimedia UK Chief Executive

I was delighted to be part of planning and delivering Wikimedia UK’s Education Summit in partnership with Middlesex University in February and wanted to share some notes, insights and presentations from that event with a broader audience than the 45 or so students, educators, academics and Wikimedians that were able to attend in person. This is something of a long read so please feel free to dip in and out, to look at the tweets from the day and to explore the excellent slides produced by a range of speakers.

Melissa Highton, Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services and Assistant Principal for Online Learning at the University of Edinburgh, gave a rousing start to the summit, using her keynote speech to advocate for Wikimedians in Residence at universities. With digital capabilities now a key component in student employability, and driving innovation in the economy, Melissa’s argument was that higher education institutions can’t afford not to have a Wikimedian on their team! The work in Edinburgh has improved the quality and quantity of open knowledge, embedded information literacy skills in the curriculum and made it easier to develop authentic learning experiences for larger bodies of students. For Edinburgh undergraduates, the opportunity to edit Wikipedia means that they are part of a worldwide open source software project, which Melissa sees as a significant authentic learning opportunity. The work enables students to understand sources and copyright and also “leads into discussions about the privilege and geography of knowledge”, as well as questions about neutrality.

Melissa also spoke about gender inequality in science and technology, and the role that working with Wikimedia can play in tackling structural barriers for women working in academia, particularly in relation to Athena Swann initiatives. She noted that the kind of work a Wikimedian in Residence will do can deliver successful, measurable outcomes on gender equality; and added that she feels “academics are missing a trick if they are not factoring Wikipedia into public engagement and understanding”.

To close, Melissa touched on some of the challenges inherent in working with the Wikimedia community, and the need for a resident to help negotiate and navigate the challenges of editing Wikipedia as a structured group activity. As she put it, “Wikimedians will save you from Wikimedians.”

Melissa’s high-level overview of the university wide impact of and strategic case for a Wikimedian in Residence was complemented brilliantly by Stefan Lutschinger’s more practical but no less compelling keynote speech focused on his own approach to Wikipedia in the curriculum. Stefan is Associate Lecturer in Digital Publishing at Middlesex University with whom Wikimedia UK worked closely in planning the event. He gave a detailed account of how the module he has developed and run for three years – with input from volunteers Ed Hands and Fabian Tompsett – is building digital literacy and confidence amongst his students and enhancing academic practice. He also touched upon Wikidata, as a resource that enables undergraduates to “understand the architecture, the anatomy, of data”, and ended his speech by sharing his ambition to make editing Wikipedia a mandatory part of the curriculum for first year students at Middlesex.

Richard Nevell leading a workshop at #WMED17 – image by John Lubbock

Following these excellent speeches the summit broke into three workshop spaces, with the volunteer Nav Evans and Wikimedian in Residence at Edinburgh University, Ewan McAndrew, running a practical workshop on Wikidata; Wikimedia UK’s Richard Nevell and Hephzibah Israel, Lecturer in Translation Studies at Edinburgh, giving a presentation on Wikipedia in the Classroom and the use of the Outreach Dashboard; and an unconference space facilitated by Andy Mabbett. I attended the latter and participated in a wide-ranging discussion with a group of established Wikimedians and one or two people from the university sector, which explored instructional design and materials for developing editing skills, the challenges of adapting resources for different learning styles and the need to be explicit about the benefit of editing in terms of research and analytical skills, plus next steps and potential partners for the UK Chapter.

After the morning workshops we moved into Lightning Talks, with Fabian Tompsett kicking us off by talking about his residency at the May Day Room. In particular he highlighted the potential offered by Wikisource. This is sometimes seen as a repository for older materials but we should be encouraging more academics to upload their materials and papers.

It was fantastic to have a number of presentations from Stefan’s students, including Behlul, Adrianna and Lauryna, who talked about their experiences of working on Wikimedia as part of their Media Studies course. Behlul shared the creation of a pirate pad to edit articles as a group, and noted that he now views Wikimedia as a platform for different learning opportunities rather than just somewhere to gain information. Adrianna focused on Fake news vs Wikipedia and was “fascinated by what a reliable source of information Wikipedia actually turns out to be…contributions can be traced and authors are accountable. Tens of thousands of Wikipedia editors act as watch dogs”. She also quoted the Wikimedia Foundation’s Executive Director, Katherine Maher, who describes the projects as a “public park for knowledge.”

Educator and Wikimedian Charles Matthews gave a presentation on a new online learning resource that he is currently developing, with input from Wikimedia UK trustee Doug Taylor, based on the idea of questions as data. He is interested in annotation, collaboration and translation of educational materials, with robust metadata that tells you more about the resource such as to what extent it has been tested in the classroom and how has it been used successfully. To make this project work will require a big database of questions that Charles and Doug are hoping to crowd source, with the aim of having a link to relevant questions from the sidebar on any given Wikipedia article.

Clem Rutter also highlighted the potential to make better use of existing technologies to support the use of Wikimedia as a tool for teaching and learning. He gave a short introduction to his Portal for Learning, which draws on his substantial experience as a secondary school teacher and his existing links and relationships with the formal education community.

Ewan McAndrew gave an energetic and comprehensive account of his work at Edinburgh University, focusing on the successful introduction of Wikipedia in the Classroom assignments in a number of departments. He sees Wikipedia as a powerful tool for educators and not something that has to be additional to their practice and described the work of Translation Studies MA students contributing in one language and translating into a different language using the content translation tool, noting how allowing students to take ownership of this work was a critical motivating factor. He also shared outcomes from the World Christianity course, in which students edited Wikipedia to present a more holistic, broader worldview of Christianity, which otherwise tends to be written about with a western bias.

Ewan is very pleased that 65% of event attendees have been women, a key target audience for his events given the gender gap highlighted by Melissa earlier in the day. He feels that “we need to demystify Wikipedia and make it accessible, share good practice and not reinvent the wheel” when working across universities. With this in mind Ewan is in the process of creating and sharing resources, videos and lesson plans for educators.

Judith Scammell closed the lightning talks by giving her perspective as a librarian based at St George’s University in London. She is in the early stages of getting staff and students to use Wikipedia but feels that it is ideal for building the 21st century learning skills of enquiry, creativity, participation and digital Literacy. Judith has been inspired by Natalie Lafferty, Head of the Centre for Technology and Innovation in Learning at Dundee University, who shares her insights through her blog e-LiME.

Wikimedians working at #WMED17 – image by John Lubbock

Following lunch and networking, the attendees of the summit again broke into three workshop sessions, with another unconference space, a presentation by Dr Martin Poulter and Liz McCarthy on working together on a Wikimedian in Residence programme at Bodleian Libraries and now across the University of Oxford, and Josie Taylor and Lorna Campbell leading a session on curating Wikimedia’s educational resources. I very much enjoyed hearing from Wikimedian in Resident Martin and Liz – Web and Digital Media Manager at Bodleian Libraries – about the success of the residency in terms of correcting bias. In his initial residency, Martin focused on sharing the 8000 files that he felt were of most interest and that represented hidden histories, with these now having had nearly 50 million page views. In the new phase of the residency he is working across the whole university, building relationships at an early stage with a dozen big research projects to build in openness from the start, and linking research outputs and educational materials. They are now thinking more about interdisciplinary practice and feel there is potential benefit for every department of the university, with Liz commenting that hosting a Wikimedian in Residence is “an obvious path on the way to public engagement”.

A talk in the main room at #WMED17 – image by John Lubbock

Finally, we gathered together at the end of the day in a plenary discussion to share key points from each session, and to start thinking about future developments. Martin Poulter encouraged everyone to take the next step in implementing any new ideas that have emerged from the summit, and Nav Evans encouraged people to create their own Histropedia timeline. I hope that everyone who attended was able to take away at least one thing that they can do at an individual level and that those in positions of influence are thinking about how they can create change at an institutional level. For Wikimedia UK, some key action points emerged, including the need to:

  • Develop and share our thinking in terms of education, particularly how we prioritise this work and what support we can offer teachers and learners
    Support existing Wikimedia education projects and nurture new ideas.
  • Build on the work that’s been started in terms of curating and creating resources and redeveloping the education pages on the Wikimedia UK site.
  • Continue to provide opportunities for people working within education and Wikimedia to come together virtually and in person to share practice.
  • Share models of good practice, case studies and learning.

If you’re interested in how Wikimedia can play in role in education and support learners to contribute to the Wikimedia projects, please email us at education@wikimedia.org.uk.

Guest post: Teaching competition law differently

Wikimedia UK’s educators’ workshop in summer 2016.

This post was written by Dr Pedro Telles, Senior Lecturer in Law at Swansea University and originally published on his website.

For the last couple of years with my colleague Richard Leonard-Davies I have been teaching competition law here at Swansea University and doing so in a very traditional and straightforward way: lectures focused on plenty of case law and seminars where we drilled down the details. As competition law is one of those topics that can be eminently practical, there was plenty of scope for improvement. As we run two separate Competition Law modules in different semesters (Agreements in the first, Dominance in the second) it is possible to make changes in only a part of the year.

About a year ago I found this blogpost by Chris Blattman on getting students to draft a Wikipedia article as part of their assessment. Blattman called this the creation of a public good while my preferred description is getting them to pay forward for the next lot. Immediately I thought, “hmmm let’s see the entries for competition law” and they were very underwhelming.

Fast forward a year, a few hoops and plenty of support from Wikimedia UK and we’re now in the position of starting the module with a new assessment structure that includes the (re)-drafting of a Wikipedia entry. Here’s the nitty gritty:

Assessment 1 (2,000 words)

For the first coursework you will have to choose from the topics covered this semester and check if it has a Wikipedia entry or not. Once you have selected a topic you will need to submit it for approval to either member of the teaching team. If an entry already exists you will critically analyse the entry by providing a report which encompasses the following:

–       Why you have chosen this topic

–       What is covered in the Wikipedia entry

–       What the entry does well

–       How the entry could be improved in your view (ie, caselaw, different perspectives, more recent doctrinal developments, context)

–       What aspects of the topic were not covered but should have been included

–       What sources (academic/case-law) you would use to reference the entry

We expect the piece to be factual on its description of the area of the law you decided to analyse but at the same time critical and reflective, basing yourself in good quality academic sources for the arguments you are presenting.

 

Assessment 2 (1,000 words)

For Coursework 2 you will be expected to put in action the comments and analysis from Coursework 1, ie you will be drafting an actual Wikipedia entry that improves on the strong points identified and addresses the weaknesses as well. This entry will be drafted on your Wikipedia dashboard (to be discussed in the Coursework Workshop in March) and will have to be submitted both on Turnitin and also uploaded to Wikipedia itself before the deadline.

Regular plagiarism rules apply, so if you pick an entry that already exists you are advised to re-write it extensively, which, to implement the changes from Coursework 1 you should be doing nonetheless. It is fundamental that you make the Turnitin submission prior to the Wikipedia one

The drafting style for this entry will be very different from the first one (or any academic coursework for that matter) as you are no longer critiquing a pre-existing text, but creating an alternative one. As such, it is expected to be descriptive and thorough, providing a lay reader with an understanding of the topic at hand. For an idea, please check Wikipedia’s Manual of Style: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_articles

What we are hoping for with this experiment is to get students out of their comfort zone and used to think and write differently from the usual academic work. Instead of padding and adding superfluous materials, they will be expected (and marked) to a different standard.

But that is not the only thing we’re changing as the seminars will also be quite different from the past. This year we will use WhatsApp as a competition law case study.

 

Why WhatsApp?

Well, when considering what company/product to use as a case study there had been no investigations into WhatsApp so that made it a clear frontrunner as a potential case study. It’s a digital product/service which may or may not be tripping EU Competition Law rules with enough of a grey area to get people to think. So we will apply the law to WhatsApp and try to figure out if:

– It has a dominant position (and if so, in what market)

– It has abused its putative dominant position

– Its merger with Facebook is above board

– it’s IP policy/third-app access policy is compliant with competition law requirements

To this end, students will have to find information by themselves (incredible the amount of statistics freely available these days online…) and be prepared to work together in the seminar to prepare the skeleton arguments in favour/against any of those possibilities. The second half of the seminar will be spent with the teams arguing their position.

We’ll see how it goes and will comment on the whole experiment in four months or so. In the meanwhile, if you want to know more drop me a line in the comments.

Bunhill Fields: Wikimedia, gamification and richer media content

Bunhill Fields, Middle Enclosure with Head Gardener Anthony – image by Jwslubbock CC BY-SA 4.0

I really like Magnus Manske’s WikiShootMe tool. It visualises Wikidata items, Commons photos and Wikipedia articles on an OpenStreetMap. Wikidata items are shown as red if they have no photo and green if they do have one. For the past few months, I’ve been spending my lunch hours walking around the area near the Wikimedia UK offices, trying to turn red data points into green ones.

WikiShootMe tool – green Wikidata items dotted around Bunhill Fields – Image by Jwslubbock

The biggest concentration of data items near our office was in Bunhill Fields, a famous cemetery just outside the old city walls of London. It opened in the 17th century, and had over 100,000 people buried there before it closed in the middle of the 19th century. Because of its location, it became a home for many nonconformist Christians, especially Methodists, as it is just over the road from the the Methodist Chapel of John Wesley. Daniel Defoe, William Blake and John Bunyan are buried there, along with Wesley’s mother Susanna.

Bunhill fields is a beautiful place to walk through, and now, thanks to the linked data I’ve attached to the Wikidata items for the listed graves in the cemetery, you can view images of all of the graves to identify which one is which as you walk around the site. I’ve also created a hyperlapse video showing a walk around the cemetery which is CC licensed.

Most of the gravesites are enclosed, but I could take photos of many of the graves from the paths, and on some days, groups of volunteer gardeners manage the enclosures, and are happy to let you enter to take photos. The park attendant was also very helpful, and let me look at his book showing the locations of graves whose inscriptions had become illegible, which helped to identify many of them.

Bunhill cemetery book showing location of graves – image by Jwslubbock CC BY-SA 4.0

Eventually, I ticked all the graves off the list, and I have to say that it was quite fun and satisfying. I’ve always felt that there is an underlying element of gamification within the Wikimedia projects. People take pride in having lots of edits or uploads, completing tasks and being the person who started particular articles. If these elements could be made more satisfying within the overall user experience of editing Wikimedia projects, it could encourage many more editors to participate.

In May, there are two hackathons taking place for developers working on Wikimedia projects in Prague and Vienna, and there will be a particular focus on the Wikimedia Commons Uploader, an android app that will make uploading easier. Currently, the web browser is a pain to use, and you can only upload 50 photos at a time. With millions of people in the developing world becoming connected to the internet through their mobiles, we need to improve the user experience for the projects, especially on mobile phones.

Imagine a Pokemon style application which took you on a walking tour of you nearby location, pointing out historical heritage and showing you the geolocated data that exists and encouraging you to fill in the gaps, taking photos or adding descriptions or other fields. Rewarding the editors with points for valuable edits and uploads could make the whole experience much more enjoyable and encourage people to edit who would never normally consider it.

We have a long way to go in developing our open source community, but there are exciting possibilities ahead as our movement evolves to meet new challenges and fix old problems.

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If you’re interested to get involved and learn more about Wikidata and how it works, you can sign up here to attend our Wikidata hackathon on Saturday April 8 at the Wikimedia UK offices near Old Street.

Wikipedia Vs Fake News

Old media – image by User:Rufus330Ci

This article based on the text of Wikimedia UK’s submission to the government’s inquiry into fake news, which was launched in January.

A changing media landscape

The media landscape has changed beyond all recognition over the past 25 years. Before the internet, there were just a handful of media providers with large, guaranteed audiences and plenty of funding to compete with each other on the quality of their journalistic output.

In this bygone era, people generally had more trust in mainstream sources of information and knowledge. You knew where this media was coming from, and the media landscape was predictable. But now none of this certainty exists. The media landscape is diverse, with hundreds of subsidiary websites controlled by opaque political groups or corporate bodies. Faith in the old canonical media sources has eroded and social groups insulate themselves in bubbles that keep out conflicting ideas.

As economic inequality has risen, fragmented social groups have retreated into ideological positions. The erosion of trust in traditional media institutions further contributes to the ability of people to ignore facts that don’t fit their confirmation biases. This trend has become so bad that some commentators have declared that facts don’t matter.

Where does Wikipedia fit in?

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a news service (though its sister site WikiNews is a news service), and our mission is not political in the way many media organisations are – our goal is accurate, neutral information, not to make money or support any political ideology. Our volunteers are diverse in their politics, but they subscribe to the same process and mission to make the best, most neutral source of information which can be trusted by people no matter what their political views are. A recent study by Harvard Business School showed that Wikipedia articles usually become more politically neutral as more contributors get involved in editing them. This allows us to win the trust of our readers and hopefully provides an example to the media of how to regain the confidence of the general public.

As the charity which supports and promotes Wikipedia and its sister projects in the UK, we believe that facts do matter, but the way in which they are produced matters too. Wikipedia generates trust in itself through transparency and verifiability. You can check the sources of the facts written on every page in the list of citations. You can see the history of how each article was written and the accounts or IP addresses of the editors who wrote it. If you disagree with the content, you can discuss it on the talk page of the article to reach consensus with other editors about whether the information should be included.

Part of the problem is that our education system is still too often set up to inculcate facts, rather than analytical ways of thinking. Our pedagogic processes haven’t evolved from a media landscape in which you could be reasonably sure that what the BBC said was true, to one in which children are bombarded with messages from different political points of view, advertisers and ideologies. Our minds have always been a battleground for various social forces, but the sheer number of agents and institutions vying for control of our thoughts and feelings today is so large that it is confusing and destabilising for many.

In such a confusing landscape, people will often choose simple, clear messages which cut through this white noise. Facile slogans with little substance like ‘Take our country back’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ can gain momentum and huge support, while more complex facts and realities are drowned out.

Teach critical ways of thinking, not just facts

We believe that instead of trying to control the conversation and narrative, the best thing that governments can do is to arm their citizens with the educational tools to analyse this confusing landscape and protect themselves from indoctrination by simplistic political messaging. We believe that learning how to use Wikipedia, engaging in the creation of knowledge through debate and consensus, is one way that people can be armed with the analytic tools to form their own opinions and to distinguish good information from bad information.

On Facebook, people often share stories that conform to their previously held beliefs without checking the source of the information first. One very common internet meme from the middle of 2016 involved a made up quote by Donald Trump about how he would run as a Republican candidate for President because they are the ‘dumbest group of voters’. Just a minute of effort searching for the source of this information would reveal that it had been made up, but people wanted to believe it. This kind of fabrication is impossible to get away with for long on Wikipedia.

When you create a new article or add information to an existing article on Wikipedia, other editors who are watching the page will review your work, deciding if the information is correct and the source is reliable. Some of the highest traffic articles on Wikipedia are peer-reviewed by thousands of different people. Here are the page view statistics for the International Women’s Day article, which has been viewed over 1 million times already in 2017 on the English Wikipedia.

Wikipedia also creates trust and reliability by being the only non-commercial website in the top 100 most popular sites (by traffic) on the internet. It is run by a non-profit charity, the Wikimedia Foundation, and has no advertising. We believe that the absence of commercial advertising is integral to maintaining trust in the site, and this shows in the public’s response. Wikipedia gets around half a billion unique visits a month, and a recent poll by YouGov shows that people trust Wikipedia more than journalists from any media group.

Ensuring the best information is more visible

One aspect of Wikipedia’s importance is its search engine ranking. Unreliable sources can game the way search algorithms work to place high on Google rankings. However, Wikipedia articles will also appear near the top of searches, providing a reliable, neutral place to find a summary of other good sources. Here is an example:

Unfortunately, many educators have had a propensity to warn students away from Wikipedia, in the belief that if it can be edited by anybody, its reliability cannot be as good as the BBC or other traditional media. We believe this is clearly not true for most articles, but the point of Wikipedia is not to encourage people to take the information at face value. The sources will be transparently listed at the bottom of each article so you can see where the information comes from.

Social trust is an important bedrock to creating political consensus. Countries that exhibit low levels of interpersonal trust are generally ones beset by social and political issues. Economic inequality creates the conditions for a loss of trust, and makes it more likely that people will be willing to believe biased information. Wikipedia cannot fix the underlying problems of economic inequality, but it can teach people how to understand and analyse information in context.

Our community creates trust by developing rules by which we can judge the veracity and value of the content that people add to Wikimedia projects. Editors have for a long time deprecated the use of unreliable media sources, with one policy (WP:PUS) stating that:

These policies guide and inform discussions and disputes about the content of articles, and editors engage with each other on the Talk pages of articles to discuss and decide by consensus whether a source is reliable and whether particular information is relevant. This whole process is transparent, and you can look back at the history of any article to see its previous versions and what has been changed.

Active knowledge construction as part of good citizenship

What we try to do as a charity is to encourage people not simply to be passive consumers of information, but active agents and participants in the collective construction of knowledge about our world. We don’t believe that the narrative of history is best controlled by any one powerful interest, and we would like everybody to understand the process by which knowledge is produced on Wikipedia, so that we can all be sure the final output is transparent and verifiable.

It is this process which is lacking in traditional media. You never get to see the process by which the sausage is made, and that allows people with low levels of trust in traditional institutions to believe that the information is inherently biased. It is harder to believe this about Wikipedia because you can see for yourself how it was produced.

The world has changed, and yet we are still right at the dawn of the internet age, experiencing the changes that this new technology has wrought on culture, politics and society. We need to get to grips with these changes and develop systems which allow a more equitable balance of power between individuals, corporations and states so that people cannot be exploited for others’ gain. Wikipedia is one way to do that.

Why bots are important for Wikipedia

A robot built to write the Bible – image by Mirko Tobias Schaefer

The Guardian recently picked up on a piece of research about the behaviour of bots on Wikipedia in the first 10 years of its history. The research noted that as bots became more common, their rules sometimes came into conflict with each other, resulting in some bots changing or reverting thousands of edits by other bots.

Bots can be incredibly useful. They do a lot of the repetitive and mundane edits that would take humans ages and can be automated reasonably easily. One of the most notable examples is Lsjbot, which has created millions of Wikipedia stub pages in Swedish and Cebuano (a Philippine language and the mother tongue of the Swedish bot creator’s wife).

This has resulted in Swedish and Cebuano punching far above their weight in terms of the number of articles in their respective languages. The Welsh language Wicipedia has also expanded considerably using automated stub creation. Aside from this, one of the major uses of bots is to protect against vandalism, for example by reverting edits containing swear words.

Of course, the work of bots has not gone without criticism. The large-scale creation of articles (on the English language Wikipedia at least) has been restricted and a bot policy has been implemented to regulate the kinds of tasks that bots are allowed to perform. The Wikipedia page about bots states that:

‘Bots are able to make edits very rapidly and can disrupt Wikipedia if they are incorrectly designed or operated. For these reasons, a bot policy has been developed.’

Bots perform mundane but vital tasks such as:

The way in which Wikipedia operates can be seen as labyrinthine; a trait which is somewhat unavoidable in large, open source communities like the Wikimedia projects. So perhaps it’s not surprising that journalists often write about ‘murky and opaque’ underbelly of Wikipedia without capturing the full complexity of how the websites work. Once you get involved and see how it works, it’s usually not as complex or strange as it might seem at first glance.

Editing Wikipedia and its sister projects is great for anyone who wants to become more IT literate and understand how the complex series of relationships and data flows that we call the internet works. Curating the largest store of information and the biggest human project in the history of the world isn’t easy, and it takes a lot of people a lot of time to make Wikipedia as good as it is. We think it’s worth it, and can bring a lot of personal development and satisfaction to the people who do it.

So why not join in? To get started, read our recent blog post on starting to edit Wikipedia here.

How do Wikipedia editors decide what are reliable sources?

Public domain image by user:Julo

Over the past few weeks, Wikimedia UK has received a large number of press inquiries related to the Guardian’s article ‘Wikipedia bans Daily Mail as ‘unreliable’ source’. Now that the dust has settled on this story a little, we thought it might be helpful to clarify how the community of editors who create Wikipedia and its sister projects came to adopt a policy to generally avoid using references to Daily Mail articles.

Much of the coverage of this editorial decision, both by The Guardian and by other media, referred to Wikipedia at least as often as Wikipedia editors; although The Guardian did add that ‘The move is likely to stop short of prohibiting linking to the Daily Mail’, because as many Wikimedians will be fully aware, one of the Five Pillars of Wikipedia is that ‘Wikipedia has no firm rules’.

‘Wikipedia bans the Daily Mail’ is pretty much the headline which every media outlet went with for this story.

We at Wikimedia UK recognise that there is often confusion between the UK charity and the Wikimedia Foundation based in the United States, as well as the relationship between the Wikimedia movement, chapters like Wikimedia UK, and the open knowledge websites owned by the Foundation including Wikipedia. Often, people do not even realise that Wikileaks, Julian Assange’s website (which is not in fact based on a wiki structure) has nothing to do with Wikimedia.

Unfortunately, talking about ‘Wikipedia does X’ tends to give the public the impression that Wikipedia is a unitary body run by a company, and this is what will stick in people’s minds, even if the article itself includes a more complex analysis. In a world that is commercialised and run for profit, the very concept of a decentralised, open source encyclopaedia whose infrastructure is administered by a non-profit charity can seem difficult to understand for many.

While it is true to say that it’s rare for publications to be singled out as unreliable, it has generally been the case that established policy guidelines such as those on Identifying Reliable Sources (also known as WP:RS) have served the purpose of ensuring that poor references do not creep in. For example, ‘self-published media [like blogs, forum posts] are largely not acceptable.’

The wider point here is worth noting: Wikipedia editors have long deprecated the use of tabloid articles as references. Wikipedia guidelines on potentially unreliable sources (WP:PUS) states that:

The point about notability is particularly important here. Lots of people want to start articles about things that aren’t ‘Wikipedia worthy’, like celebrities, their mum, cat, friend or the time in school where they pulled a prank that was totally rad back in the 90s. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. It’s not a place to collect celebrity facts, and there needs to be some filtering out of things that aren’t widely important or influential.

It’s also worth noting that the reliable sources (WP:RS) guidelines state that,

‘Wikipedia articles (and Wikipedia mirrors) are not reliable sources for any purpose (except as sources on themselves per WP:SELFSOURCE). Because Wikipedia forbids original research, there is nothing reliable in it that is not citable with something else.’

When it comes to sources for medical articles, the rules are even more stringent (WM:MEDRS). Wikipedia editors want to protect and ensure the site’s reputation for reliability, and to do that, the standards for referencing need to be very high.

Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects are complex creations which have accumulated as the result of millions of human work hours. As such, they can be quite opaque for most users of Wikipedia who only engage with the site’s surface by reading the articles. These articles comprise only around 30% of the entire number of pages on Wikipedia, compared to another 70% which is made up of the discussion pages, policy documents and guidelines intended to help editors decide what should go into the articles themselves.

It is quite hard to understand how these parts all work together unless you get involved in editing yourself, and particularly in the discussion pages behind the articles. The ethos of the site is based on consensus and discussion with the aim of taking a neutral stance on contentious issues.

Despite this, the content of the site is influenced by the interests of those who edit it. The majority of the editors are white, European or North American and male. This means that the content reflects their interests more than those of, for example, black or Latino women.

If people who read the Daily Mail believe that Wikipedia editors are biased, they are more than welcome to get involved in editing Wikimedia projects. As long as they follow the guidelines on Neutral Point of View (NPoV), good referencing and assuming the good intentions of other editors, they are free to argue that the Daily Mail is in fact an accurate source for referencing factual information.

That’s how Wikipedia works, and we would be more than happy to have the 1.49 million daily readers of the Mail involved in improving the volume and accuracy of content on Wikipedia.

#1lib1ref at the University of Edinburgh

indexI’ve been interested in Wikimedia projects since taking part in the University of Edinburgh’s Women and Medicine editathon in February 2015, when I wrote an article on the Scottish doctor and women’s medical health campaigner Margaret Ida Balfour. I enjoyed researching her life and achievements and found it immensely rewarding and satisfying to see her page appear on Wikipedia (and at the top of Google search results!).

Since then, I have gone on to receive training as a Wikimedia Ambassador from Ewan McAndrew, the University of Edinburgh’s Wikimedian in Residence, and led my own small training session for the Library’s Centre for Research Collections staff and volunteers. At the upcoming History of Medicine editathon, I’m exploring Wikimedia projects beyond Wikipedia, starting by testing out Wikisource with one of our recently digitised, out-of-copyright PhD theses.

Hunting citations

However, it’s not just the big, research-heavy element of Wikipedia that interests me; I also like using the Citation Hunt Tool to improve the quality of existing content. The tool provides the user with a paragraph of text from Wikipedia which contains a statement not backed up by reliable evidence (and therefore labelled with the [citation needed] tag). The challenge is to track down a trustworthy source, such as a peer-reviewed journal article or news article from a reputable publication, in order to back up the statement made in the text. It’s very satisfying when you discover an appropriate source and, as the statements can come from anywhere on Wikipedia, it’s easy to end up researching a range of bizarre and random topics.

In one of the examples I’ve worked on, I used a press release from the official San Francisco 49ers website to confirm the statement that American Footballer Justin Renfrow “signed a contract with San Francisco 49ers on May 18, 2015 along with Michigan State’s Mylan Hicks.”

Citation Hunt

 

#1Lib#Ref

I first dabbled with this tool last January as part of Wikipedia’s #1lib1ref campaign to mark its 15th birthday. At one of our team meetings, Library staff set about making 32 edits to Wikipedia, some using the Citation Hunt Tool and others using their own knowledge and research. We therefore had a very clear target to beat this year! Wikimedia has added a new feature to the tool, so users can now select citations from a topic of interest, rather than just being provided with a completely random statement from the encyclopaedia. Added to this, many of my colleagues were using the visual editor for the first time and feedback was that this made the whole editing process far easier and more enjoyable.

Despite this, one of the big issues raised by colleagues was how to define exactly what can be considered a reliable source. There is lots of information on Wikipedia’s help pages about this issue but a short one-page guide to using reliable sources would be useful for occasions such as this. I personally got into a spot of bother when I used a source which, although published and available on Google Books, was not considered by the Wikimedia community to be reliable enough…

All in all, library staff and our colleagues from the Learning Teaching and Web division managed a grand total of 63 edits, meaning we almost doubled last year’s effort. There are rumours of a friendly rivalry with our colleagues at the National Library of Scotland… this will certainly encourage me to add a few more citations!

Gavin Willshaw

Digital Curator

Library and University Collections

University of Edinburgh

@gwillshaw

Wikimedia UK and National Library of Scotland announce new Gaelic post

The Callanish stones, a prehistoric site on the Western Isles of Scotland - Image by lolaire~commonswiki
The Callanish stones, a prehistoric site on the Western Isles of Scotland – Image by lolaire~commonswiki

The Gaelic language is to be promoted through one of the world’s most popular websites thanks to a new role based at the National Library of Scotland.

Dr Susan Ross, who learned Gaelic as a teenager and has since gained a doctorate in Gaelic studies, has been appointed the world’s first Gaelic Wikimedian in Residence. This year-long Wikimedian in Residence post will see her working with the Gaelic community across Scotland to improve and create resources on Uicipeid, the Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is the world’s most popular online encyclopaedia of which Uicipeid forms one part. It has been in existence since 2004 and currently has more than 14,000 pages of information in Gaelic. Dr Ross will work with the existing community of users to identify priorities for development and encourage new users to begin contributing.

Over the coming year Dr Ross will collaborate with Gaelic speakers, community groups and organisations to improve Uicipeid content by offering training and edit-a-thons. The work will also seek to promote use of the extensive Gaelic resources held by the National Library of Scotland, many of which can be accessed online.

Dr Ross, who has been contributing to Uicipeid since 2010, said: ‘Contributing to Gaelic Wikipedia builds a 21st century information source where knowledge, in Gaelic, about both the Gaelic world and the wider world, can be stored and shared. It is a great opportunity for Gaelic speakers to exercise reading and writing skills in a creative, informal, collaborative environment and I’m excited about the possibilities to get more people involved.’

Gill Hamilton, Digital Access Manager for the National Library said: ‘We were impressed by the number of high quality applications we received from Gaelic speakers to fill this role which demonstrates the importance in which it is held. Susan emerged as the best candidate and we look forward to working with her as she develops this exciting role.’

Daria Cybulska, Head of Programmes and Evaluation at Wikimedia UK said: ‘Issues of diversity and equality are central to Wikimedia UK’s vision and we work to enable people from all ethnic and linguistic backgrounds living in the UK and beyond to enjoy increased access to their own heritage. This project will be crucial in addressing this focus, and we are really looking forward to supporting it.’

The initiative is a partnership between the National Library of Scotland and Wikimedia UK, the charity that supports and promotes the free online encyclopaedia. It is supported by grants from Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the agency responsible for promoting Gaelic language throughout Scotland and internationally, and Wikimedia UK.

The National Library has some of the best collections of Gaelic material anywhere in the world and has been working hard in recent years to make much of this material as available online. This material demonstrates the key role played by Gaelic in Scottish history and culture.

Wikimedia UK Education Summit #WMUKED17

Wikipedia in Education meetup - Image by Josie Fraser
Wikipedia in Education meetup – Image by Josie Fraser

Blog post by Josie Fraser, educational technologist and trustee of Wikimedia UK

If you would like to attend, please sign up on the Eventbrite page.

The Wikimedia UK Education Summit takes place on February 20th at Middlesex University, London, in partnership with the University’s Department of Media.

It follows on from the successful 2016 Wikimedia UK Education Meetup. Wikimedians and educators working in schools, colleges, higher education and adult education met in Leicester to help inform the work of Wikimedia UK in relation to education, and connect to others using (or wanting to use) Wikimedia projects. The day showcased educators supporting learning and actively engaging learners using a range of projects, including Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikidata.

This event will continue to build connections and share expertise in relation to Wikimedia UK’s work in formal education. Everyone is welcome – whether you are just getting started and want to find out more about how Wikimedia projects can support education, or you are an established open education champion!

Why should educators attend?

The day will open with two talks. Melissa Highton (Director of the Learning, Teaching and Web Services, University of Edinburgh) will talk about the benefits of appointing a Wikimedian in Residence. If your institution is looking for an effective, affordable and innovative way of actively engaging students and supporting staff development through real world knowledge projects, this is a not-to-be-missed talk!

Stefan Lutschinger (Associate Lecturer in Digital Publishing, Middlesex University) will talk about incorporating Wikipedia editing into the university curriculum. Stefan will cover the practical experience of using Wikimedia projects with formal learning communities.

There will be a range of workshops throughout the day – ideal for those looking for an introduction to specific projects, or to brush up on their skills. Workshops include Wikidata, Wikipedia in the Classroom (and using the Education Dashboard), and how to maximise the potential of a Wikimedian in Residence in a university setting. There will also be a session looking at identifying and curating Wikimedia project resources for educators, helping to support others across the UK. Alongside all of this will be a facilitated unconference space for attendees to discuss subjects not covered by the planned programme.

Please consider signing up here for a lightening talk (of up to five minutes) to share projects and ideas, or email karla.marte@wikimedia.org.uk.

What can Wikimedia UK offer educators?

Wikimedia UK is the national charity for the global Wikimedia movement and enables people and organisations to contribute to a shared understanding of the world through the creation of open knowledge. We recognise the powerful and important role formal education can and does play in relation to this, but also the challenges sometimes faced by educators in relation to institutional adoption and use of Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia.

This summit offers educators and Wikimedians in the UK the opportunity to work together to help learners and organisations connect and contribute to real world projects and to the global Wikimedia community.

Wikimedia UK can support educators in a wide range of ways: providing events, training, support, connecting communities to volunteers, and helping identify potential project funding.

Can’t make the summit, but want to be involved?

Become a Wikimedia UK member – membership is only £5 per year and provides a range of practical benefits – directly supporting the work of the organisation to make knowledge open and available to all, and being kept in touch about Wikimedia UK events, activities and opportunities. You can join online here.