Calling all scientists!; More Wikipedia editors in the Netherlands than all of Africa combined: A recap of Wikipedia in the media this week
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Nature covers the recent Wikipedia Science Conference in London, part of Wikipedia's outreach to scientists and efforts to "bridge the gap between the online encyclopaedia and the research community".
Discussing the reasons why such outreach is necessary, Martin Poulter, an organizer of the conference, told Nature:
| “ | A lot of academics have the impression that because anyone can edit, that means it’s a Wild West. But Wikipedia is a community of ultra-pedants who care about facts being right. | ” |
Poulter added that there was a "cultural barrier" militating against stronger involvement from scientists, who may feel they have too little time to get into the lengthy discussions that sometimes occur around Wikipedia edits. Poulter said, "There have to be changes from both sides. That’s what we’re discussing."
The conference, which took place September 2–3, brought Wikipedians together with academics and publishers new to Wikipedia editing. (Sept. 7) T
Vice reports on a paper published by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) which comes to the conclusion that "the relative democratisation of the Internet has not brought about a concurrent democratisation of voice and participation".
| “ | We wanted to look at issues of participation in Wikipedia and look at who gets to represent who. [...] We wanted to see if Wikipedia offered a space, not just for people in the UK to write about things in the UK, but for, say, people in Kenya to write about things in Kenya. | ” |
By geolocating both edits and editors across the various language versions of Wikipedia, the researchers found that editors from North America played a disproportionate role in creating both Wikipedia content about their own culture and content about other cultures. Five countries – the US, the UK, Germany, France and Italy – were responsible for 45 percent of all Wikipedia edits, and there were "more Wikipedia editors from The Netherlands than all of Africa combined". And when editors from low-income countries did participate, they tended to write about global rather than local topics.
Mark Graham, an associate professor at the OII and one of the authors of the paper, suggested that despite awareness of this issue within Wikipedia and laudable efforts such as the global outreach team, Wikipedia "is not inherently democratising knowledge" – its own rules reinforce rather than subvert the status quo:
| “ | You need content to make more content on Wikipedia; you can’t just submit content without any citation. If you are trying to contribute content about a place where there is little existing content about it in the first place, you’re going to have a hard time finding sources to back up what you’re trying to say. [...] I think the reason why we see Western Europe and North America dominating at Wikipedia is not necessarily because they’re better at it, but because they have all of these underlying institutional advantages that Wikipedia is just reflecting, rather than undermining in any way. |
” |
Remedial efforts therefore needed to focus on the development of cultural and educational infrastructure in the countries concerned, Graham argued; internet technology alone was no quick fix in levelling the playing field. (Sept. 8) AK
| “ | It was the result of an investigation into some suspicious behaviour uncovered by the community, which was followed up on to figure out what was going on. And we solved the problem by banning this cluster of accounts. For us, it’s a validation of how we do things: how it’s supposed to work. | ” |
| “ | without its fact-checkers, faith in Wikipedia’s information will fade. Its survival depends on people keen to continue to contribute freely to the sum of human knowledge. The fear is the motivations of those with money will outlast the interest of editors without it. Self-serving changes to the pages of billionaires, companies or talent show contestants go unnoticed — and so, for many, become truth. Without reinforcements, the bright line cannot hold for ever. | ” |
| “ | I think our approach has been better than anyone's ... I am most proud that we have always been 100% uncompromising, and better than any other major website on these issues. | ” |
| “ | Our own research has shown that scholars with Wikipedia articles have no greater statistically significant scientific impact than those without. So why do some appear on Wikipedia while others do not? The reason is clear: because many of those entries are written by themselves or their students or colleagues. It’s important that this aspect of Wikipedia should be communicated to those reading it, and remembered every single time you’re using it. | ” |
| “ | Wikipedia appears to be a miracle of collaboration – but without the right kind of governance structures, it was always ripe for gaming. There’s no reason a collaborative project should inevitably be gamed, if the necessary checks and procedures to prevent it are in place. But this is Wikipedia’s biggest problem: it prefers protecting its contributors above any other ethical concern. Given the choice between doing the right thing (producing a better Wikipedia) and protecting anonymity, the Wikipedia community has chosen anonymity every time. | ” |
Discuss this story
Peteforsyth wrote a worthwhile critique of the Financial Times piece: "Wikipedia cofounder misrepresents the site’s rules on paid editing". Jimmy Wales responded on Facebook. Andreas JN466 15:43, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There is no decline in referrals from Google
I should note that my team's analysis group did some analysis of referrer traffic and produced this report. We found that referrals from Google have been increasing in the past few months. I'm unsure what data these news pieces on the decline of traffic from Google to Wikipedia are using, but it would appear to be incorrect. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:06, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Cite required
"the reason why they're not embracing the recent call to action"
Having been in "the sciences world" for some time now, I'd like to posit the real reason is that scientists, generally, don't like to write. Oh sure, a peer reviewed paper written in completely dense prose is a requirement of the job, but a clear explanation of a topic is something they find little time to do for their own students, let alone anyone else. I'm certainly not the first to say this, I recall articles in Discover! complaining about this in the 1980s, but it seems there's more than enough excuses to go around and this is just the latest one.
Maury Markowitz (talk) 20:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Dayramir Gonzalez