English Heritage and the Archaeological Data Service: What does it mean to Wikipedia?

In October, English Heritage made 84 of their publications freely available online through the Archaeological Data Service. The ADS has been running since 1996 and it brings together a huge amount of information from archaeologists in the UK. Amongst the gems on the site you can find copies of unpublished fieldwork reports (known as grey literature) and copies of journals such as the Proceedings of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland. These resources are freely available online. The release of the monographs by English Heritage adds to the rich tapestry of information already available.

Digitisation is not universal. Many archaeological societies would like to digitise their publications, particularly those which are out of copyright, but time and money can be difficult to come by. But progress is being made, and the ADS is a valuable resource to researchers.

The release was so popular the ADS server struggled to keep up with the demand.

But what does this mean for Wikipedia? These books aren’t just reliable sources, they are written by some leading archaeologists, the likes of Philip Barker, Francis Pryor, and Timothy Darvill. In many cases, these are the definitive works on a particular subject. The 1990 survey and history of Carlisle Castle should be the starting place for anyone looking for detailed information on the site. The account of the excavations at Beeston Castle are the most detailed available.

The breadth and depth of these books is tremendous, and cover prehistory right up to the 20th century. It’s not hard to imagine how they could be used in Wikipedia. The pages on Acton Court (224 words) and Camber Castle (265 words) are both very short, yet have entire books written about them. Battle Abbey (686 words), Wroxeter Roman city (698 words), and Bodmin Moor (1,037 words) could be a lot more detailed and during November was read more than 1,000 times. Even sites as well known as Hadrian’s Wall which have lengthy articles could benefit from the quality of information available.

Wikipedia has an important role to play, not just in helping people discover this information but in accommodating a general audience. These monographs are often technical, and Wikipedia can be an easily accessible bridge. By using these sources to improve Wikipedia, editors are also helping English Heritage and ADS spread this information and making it more accessible.

Work has already begun: an IP has visited many of the relevant articles and added the publication available through ADS and English Heritage as a source, but there’s plenty still to do. So browse through the list and see if something catches your eye. Maybe you can be the one to make a difference to the reader.

Who writes Wikipedia’s health and medical pages and why?

By Nuša Farič, UCL, Centre for Health Informatics & Multiprofessional Education (CHIME)

Half of the editors working on Wikipedia’s 25,000 pages of medical content are qualified medics or other healthcare professionals, providing reassurance about the reliability of the website, according to our newly published research results. Those editors, who are contributing their time for free, are motivated by a belief in the value of Wikipedia, a sense of responsibility to help provide good quality health information, and because they find editing Wikipedia supports their own learning.

Wikipedia is known to be a go-to place for healthcare information for both professionals and the lay public. The first question everyone asks is: but how reliable is it? In a new study, just published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, we took a different approach. We wanted to know more about the people behind the medical pages on Wikipedia, what background do they come from, whether they have specific interests in health and what drives them to contribute to Wikipedia. Because getting health-related content on Wikipedia right is about more than getting the facts correct. It’s about how the information is presented, how topics are covered and what perspectives taken. You can read the paper here.

I’m at the beginning of my research career and I’m very proud that my first published paper is on Wikipedia and Wikipedians. I did this study over 8 months as part of my Master’s course in Health Psychology at UCL. The project was with Dr Henry Potts, a senior lecturer at UCL’s Institute of Health Informatics, who is also a long-time Wikipedian as User:Bondegezou.

Findings

In the study, we randomly selected a set of health-related articles on Wikipedia and invited people contributing to those pages to complete a questionnaire and a follow-up interview. We received 32 replies from 11 different countries, namely the UK, USA, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, China, South Africa, Australia, Malaysia and Colombia. In that snapshot of time (July-September 2012) the editors of health-related articles were predominantly men (31 out of 32), ranging in age from 12 to 59 years. 21 spoke more than one language.

Reassuringly, 15 were working in a health-related field, which included general medicine, cancer research, health psychology, health education, internal medicine, health advertising, regulatory affairs, pharmaceutical drug discovery, microbiology and medical publishing. The other half of the sample included individuals with particular health interests and students, including medical students.

72% of the sample were long-term contributors with 8 having contributed between 3-5 years, 10 between 5-8 years and 5 over 8 years. 90% contributed to other non-medical Wikipedia pages spanning architecture, astronomy, mythology, languages, history and art.

People edited health-related content on Wikipedia because they wanted to help improve content; they find that editing Wikipedia is a good way to learn about the topics themselves; they feel a sense of responsibility – often a professional responsibility – to ensure accuracy and reliability of health information for the public; they enjoy editing Wikipedia; they think highly of the value of Wikipedia. This process of inter-related value systems which drives contributing behavior is graphically depicted in our motivational model of contribution. This could be seen as Wikipedians internalising the principles of Wikipedia, the site’s Five Pillars, and that’s a key part of the social contract that makes the site work. Maybe there is a link between the idealism of many Wikipedians and the idealism of many in healthcare.

Even though we randomly selected health articles, we encountered the same editor accounts over and over. It became apparent that the core editor community number is small: it currently consists of around 300 people. Although this number is still clearly much larger than would normally be brought together to write a medical textbook!

We also observed the egalitarianism of Wikipedia: everyone has equal right to edit content if their claims are verifiable. While the high proportion of healthcare professionals provides reassurance about the accuracy of content, Wikipedia is a place of verifiability and not authority. Contributions from those who are not healthcare professionals are important too. Wikipedia’s focus on what is said rather than who is saying it has parallels with the peer review process that journal papers go through, a system that is often anonymous. Likewise, the evidence-based medicine movement, that has become dominant in healthcare, has worked hard to put research evidence above expert opinion.

Current state and the future

Plenty of doctors and patients are still wary of Wikipedia’s use in healthcare, but other research has shown that Wikipedia is extensively used by patients, by medical students, by doctors and by health researchers. We would like to see more of those using Wikipedia becoming editors and there are several recent initiatives in that area. The more people are editing, the better Wikipedia gets… although we also have to help new contributors get used to Wikipedia’s rules. That balance, between increasing participation, improving reliability and maintaining the community, is a challenge for health-related editors as it is for Wikipedia in general.

Healthcare research has already seen a big shift to open access publications, journals that are free to read, so researchers and health practitioners are becoming open to the principles of Wikipedia. I believe strongly that everyone in the world deserves access to high quality healthcare information in the language of their choice. Wikipedia is the only viable method to achieve this goal.

nfaric{at}gmail.com (User:Hydra Rain)

Final report on Wikimedia UK governance released

This post was written by Michael Maggs, Chair of Wikimedia UK

On behalf of the Wikimedia UK board I am pleased to announce the publication of the third and final report on the charity’s governance. The report has been prepared by Rosie Chapman and Sarah Loader of Belinda Pratten and Rosie Chapman Associates. It marks the conclusion of a process that began almost two years ago.

This report is the second Chapman review and is a follow-up independent audit of the progress that Wikimedia UK has made to improve its governance since January 2013. It comes 18 months after completion of the initial 2013 governance review (the Hudson review) and nine months after the first follow-up audit (the first Chapman review) which covered progress in addressing the Hudson review’s recommendations.

In summary, Chapman found:

“The charity has very largely addressed the 50 recommendations found within the original review. WMUK has developed very quickly, and the charity has clearly put a lot of effort into ensuring that its governance now meets best practice expectations. It has a cohesive, skilled and experienced board in place. They have a clear understanding of the charity’s vision and mission”.

In the section comparing WMUK with similar UK charities, we were pleased to note Chapman’s conclusion (para 42) that:

“For the stage that Wikimedia is in its life cycle it compares well with similar UK charities. Its transparency about its procedures is a beacon of best practice, and its conflicts of interest procedures are robust and well-tested”.

She further observes (paras 14 and 15) that:

“Inevitably, a lot of the Board’s efforts have to-date been internally focussed; putting in place robust governance arrangements and agreeing the new strategy that was published in March this year. Whilst there is still some fine-tuning to bed in the strategy, for example linking particular outcomes with detailed objectives, targets, budgets and performance measurement through-out the organisation, there is also the chance for WMUK’s Board to become more outward focussed in its time and efforts. This will, in turn, enable the Board to consider opportunities and choices for what the organisation does to deliver its strategy, and how it should be resourced to do so.

“From our discussion with trustees and staff it is clear that there is a real appetite for this shift in the board’s focus, and to consider more external opportunities”.

The report is worth reading in its entirety, as it includes a wealth of advice, analysis and commentary that will be of interest and use not only to Wikimedia UK itself but also to the community at large and to other organisations within the movement.

On behalf of the board I would once again like to thank Rosie Chapman for her comprehensive and insightful analysis which will be of great help in enabling us to meet the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Wikimedia UK response to Wikimedia Foundation funding allocation

This post was written by D’Arcy Myers, Wikimedia UK interim Chief Executive

As the interim CEO for Wikimedia UK I would like to take this opportunity to thank the volunteers and staff of the FDC for their work in assessing the annual grant applications. I understand that a huge amount of work is required, and we are most grateful for the care and detailed consideration that has gone into the FDC’s recommendations.

While we are of course disappointed that our requested grant has not been fully funded, we do not underestimate the challenges that face us in the UK as we move towards a new executive leadership, and we recognise the need for WMF funds to be seen to be used as effectively as possible. We are actively working to improve the efficiency of the programmes that we support, and fully understand that only by engaging more actively with our large potential volunteer base can we hope to realise our ambition of moving to a significantly higher level of charitable impact to the benefit of the Wikimedia movement. In addition to sharing our own experiences and helping other movement organisations where we can, we remain actively open to learning from the experiences and suggestions of others including the suggestions of the FDC. Thank you again.

The winners of Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 in the UK

Have you seen the UK winners of the 2014 Wiki Loves Monuments competition?

Wiki Loves Monuments is the global photography contest and the objective is to collect high quality photographs of some of the world’s most important historic sites. In the UK, this means listed buildings and scheduled monuments so there are possible subjects all over the country.

More than 500 people took part in the UK competition, contributing over 7,000 photos to Wikimedia Commons, one of the world’s largest repositories of freely licensed media files. From there the images can be used across various Wikimedia sites, and volunteers have started the process of using these images to illustrate and improve Wikipedia.

Organised by Wikimedia UK volunteers and supported by English Heritage and the Royal Photographic Society who were represented on the judging panel, this year marked the second time the UK took part in the competition.

As well as the top ten we have two special prizes for the best images of a building on an ‘At Risk’ register. These are structures considered in need of repair and maintenance, and the photographs are one step in preserving these structures for future generations. The two special awards are UK-specific, and the top ten go forward to the international judges.

Thumbnails of the winning entries are below but you can see them in all of their glory here on Wikimedia Commons.

If you have photographs taken by yourself of historic sites in the United Kingdom, please consider uploading them to Wikimedia Commons. The competition is closed, but your efforts can help improve a value resource filled with images which can be freely reused.

AdaCamp Berlin 2014 – a summary account

The photo shows a group of around 30 people smiling for the camera
A group of Ada Camp Berlin attendees

This post was written by Roberta Wedge, Gender Gap Project Worker

Ada Camp is a weekend-long event bringing together women in open technology and culture for mutual support. It was created by the Ada Initiative, which exists to support women in these fields.

I attended Ada Camp Berlin (of which Wikimedia UK was a sponsor) on October 10-12, along with Daria Cybulska (and Rebecca Kahn, who works alongside WMUK and in our office, on behalf of the Open Coalition). It was held in the offices of Wikimedia Deutschland, which seemed to create a positive impression on all the participants I spoke to. This was the first Ada Camp held outside the United States (aside from the very first one, in Melbourne), and the 57 participants were a very international group, many based in Germany or elsewhere in Europe, and many with ties of upbringing, education, and experience around the globe. Roughly half were “technical” (software designers, coders, analysts, etc.) but the rest were not, having found their ways to careers in open tech through other ways.

WMUK sponsored a welcome reception on Friday evening, which allowed the participants to begin to get to know each other. Some of them were already friends and colleagues; some others had met via the email exchanges and Twitter lists set up in the weeks before the event.

Ada Camp itself is structured as an unconference, which means that the content is partially decided by the participants themselves on Saturday morning. The sessions proposed were a mix of “I have experience with X and want to share” to “I know that X exists and want to learn more”, where X could range from a type of software to an instance of harassment or exclusion.

The whole-group activity on Saturday morning, about Imposter Syndrome (self-doubt in one’s professional role), allowed the organisers time to collate these disparate proposals into a programme.

The power of Ada Camp lies in the conversations it fosters. I attended sessions on the open source economy, being a non-techie in a technical field, Creative Commons, building safe spaces, and activism. I also found myself being asked to lead a Wikimedia session that was part editathon and part discussion of the gender gap. Ten women came to this; some had created accounts and edited years ago, but dropped it, for reasons in some cases eloquent and in others forgotten by the women themselves. Zara Rahman wrote later of why editing Hedy Lamarr’s biography earlier that year had turned her off Wikipedia; Ednah Kiome spoke about returning to editing after years away. One woman, a computational linguist, said that her job would not be possible, in a very literal sense, without Wikipedia. Some expressed surprise at how large the encyclopedia had grown since they last really looked at it, and at the number and scope of the other Wikimedia projects. Others were taken aback at how little had been written about the places they came from or the subjects they are interested in. We discussed systemic bias.

One of the insights I gained is that activism does not have to be about fighting and protesting, but it can also be about championing and evangelising. The developers have to do their behind-the-scenes work, but a project goes nowhere without the enthusiasts to go out and explain its potential and uses. This is as true of Wiki*edia as it is of Ada Camp.

A review of EduWiki Conference 2014

Image is an illustration, showing a digital image of a person in class raising their hand
Wikipedia belongs in education

This post was written by Lorna Campbell and was originally published here. Re-used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License 

Last Friday I went along to the EduWiki Conference in the distractingly beautiful St Leonard’s Hall at the University of Edinburgh. I have to confess to being a bit of a Wikimedia fangirl; I’m not a Wikimedian myself, but I’m a huge fan of Wikimedia’s work in the education domain and I believe Wikimedia has an important role to play, not just in disseminating open educational resources, but also in developing open education practice. This was highlighted by the recent Wikimedia Deutschland OERde14 Conference I went to in Berlin, which brought together over 300* participants from all sectors of German education. This is the first time I’ve managed to get to the EduWiki Conference in the UK and it certainly lived up to expectations. I’m not going to attempt to summarise the entire conference, but I do want to pick out a few highlights

The Conference was opened by Peter McColl, Rector of the University of Edinburgh and editor of the progressive blog Bright Green. McColl highlighted the venerable tradition of the Commons, describing Wikipedia as a perfect example of the Commons, a resource that we come together to create and which we can all share and use.

The morning keynote was presented by Floor Koudijs, Senior Manager of the Wikipedia Education Program who introduced just a few of the 70 education projects Wikimedia funds world wide. These include Wikipedia School (Athens), which teaches Wikipedia writing to adults as part of the Greek Ministry of Education’s Education for Lifetime programme. Several countries also include Wikipedia editing skills as part of their initial teacher training programmes.

Floor’s presentation provoked an interesting discussion about the potential importance of Wikipedia in engaging the public with research and demonstrating academic impact. Melissa Highton, Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services at the University of Edinburgh suggested that citing open access articles in Wikipedia should result in increased evidence of impact while at the same time helping to change attitudes to Wikipedia in in academia. Toni Sant, Wikimedia UK Education Organiser, added that Research Councils UK are starting to show an interest in Wikipedia and that EduWiki was mentioned positively at the 6th international Conference on Integrity and Plagiarism earlier this year.

Continue reading “A review of EduWiki Conference 2014”

Response to the new IPO orphan works licensing scheme

The photo shows an empty display case in a museum
Orphan works rules result in empty display cases

The UK’s Intellectual Property Office last week announced the launch of a new orphan works licensing scheme.

This allows individuals and institutions wishing to use a work of intellectual property where the rights holder cannot be identified to apply for a licence from the IPO. Licences are awarded where the IPO is satisfied that the applicant conducted a “diligent” search for the rights holder, and they have paid a licensing and administration fee.

This scheme brings forward little that is new. The rule allowing re-use after diligent search has been part of copyright law in the UK for many years. The primary purpose of the new licences seems to be to provide greater certainty to re-users that the searches they have undertaken are sufficiently extensive to guarantee legal protection should the copyright owner come forward.

Searches have to be exceptionally comprehensive before the Intellectual Property Office will certify them as ‘diligent’ and although there are new guidelines which will provide greater clarity for cultural institutions, the imposition of an official fee is concerning.

Even with this new scheme in place orphan works can still not be easily used by the Wikimedia projects and the volunteers who write and curate them.

A real solution to the orphan works problem must await a more radical approach that goes beyond both this and the existing EU Orphan Works Directive.

We believe that this should be addressed as part of a more far-reaching review of copyright as a whole, at a national and European level. For example, a simple reduction in copyright terms would instantly make many works which are currently orphaned available for reuse.

You can see the recent Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU position paper on copyright reform – of which we are a signatory – here.

A weekend at MozFest

The photo is a view from a balcony at MozFest, giving a top-down view on a workshop
Workshops at MozFest 2014

This post was written by Stuart Prior, Fundraising Assistant

I recently spent the weekend at Mozfest, the annual Mozilla conference, held in Greenwich.

The aim of going was to find out how Mozilla’s community worked, to make project and fundraising contacts in the open sector and, after my role in organising our own community conference, Wikimania 2014, to see how they did it.
Also, to see and support in any way I could, the Open Coalition work that Bekka Kahn was doing there in the form of running the Community Building track of the conference.

It was both very similar and very different. There were more workshops and discussions than talks, which was refreshing, if a little intimidating.  The content was often very technical and platform based, and not being a Mozillan, unfamiliar to me.

But, what felt exactly the same was the sense of community and optimism. The fact that people were friendly and open to talking to you, and I spent a lot of time explaining Wikimedia projects and how the movement worked, and met some interesting people with some interesting projects.

Moreover, Mozilla’s focus on creating an open web, and on encouraging digital literacy and engaging young people with the Open Source movement is invaluable to a free and open society. With serious concerns about online monopolies and a restricted, highly commodified and profoundly un-free internet, this is increasingly important and something we in the Wikimedia movement should all be supporting.

Debating the “Right to be Forgotten”

The photo is a portrait of Alastair McCapra
Alastair McCapra

On 23rd October Wikimedia UK board member Alastair McCapra took part in a debate at the Cambridge Union about the right to be forgotten.

The panel debated a motion that supported the right to be forgotten (RTBF). Alastair spoke against the motion, which was narrowly defeated.

The RTBF is a complicated issue and arguments both in favour and in opposition are numerous. The panel reflected a range of interests and included academics, campaigners and an MP.

Given his position on the Wikimedia UK board, and his role as chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Alastair is in a unique position to offer an informed view of the RTBF. He has written a comprehensive report on the debate which clearly summarises both sides of the argument which can be read here.

Alastair said: “The Google judgement has taken the existing principle of a right to be forgotten and turned it, in the European Union at least, into a general right to hide behind broken links (RTHBBL). There are problems with the right to hide, and there are even worse problems if we move on from that to a real right to be forgotten.”