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Author: ewhitehe

Final Reflections on my Wikipedia Journey

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At the launch event last Wednesday. Picture by me.

This week marks the end of my year-long internship as Assistant Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh. Now, at the end of my role, I can look back at all of the opportunities that this internship has given me and safely say that no other role could have offered me such an enjoyable, useful and unique experience!

Reflections on my Wikipedia experience

Within the first couple of months after starting my role, I wrote a blog reflecting on my preconceptions, experiences so far and new things I had learnt about Wikipedia. In this blog I intend to revisit this, comparing my knowledge and experiences to date with what I wrote in my first blog.

I wrote that I initially had entered the role with the misconception that Wikipedia was not to be trusted, and that the nature of it being an open and crowdsourced project was a weakness of the site. I have come to realise, however, that this element of Wikipedia is quite the opposite of a ‘weakness’. Throughout my time as Assistant Wikimedian in Residence I have encountered scepticism about the reliability of Wikipedia from friends, family, staff and students. When these doubts are expressed, I like to combat them picking from the armoury of facts I have picked up whilst in the role. For instance, explaining the role of editors watching pages and conducting the recent page patrols, the fact that this openness means that there are over 300 languages used on Wikipedia, the clear and effective policies and guidelines, and the importance of including verifiable andreliable sources in articles.

Print Wikipedia – Benjamin Busch/Import Projects, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

It has become clear to me that the open knowledge, crown sourced, open-ended and community elements of Wikipedia are the strengths of the site and are the reason why it is still the world’s 7th most visited website. It is a useful tool for both education institutions and students alike and can really illuminate the student learning experience.

Wikipedia differs from printed references in important ways. It is continually created and updated, and encyclopedic articles on news events appear within minutes, making it more dynamic than most traditional resources. Anyone can improve Wikipedia, and more than 23 years of volunteer editors giving their time and talents to the project have made Wikipedia history’s most comprehensive encyclopedia. Its editors add quality and quantity, remove misinformation, and fix errors and vandalism. The sources they provide are used by researchers worldwide (see Researching with Wikipedia).

In summary, Wikipedia has tested the wisdom of the crowd since 2001 and has found that it succeeds.” – taken from the Wikipedia:About page.

Women in Red

Women in Red Logo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In my original blog, I noted how happy and interested I was to be learning about the Women in Red Wikiproject. When I started, articles about women made up around 19.72% of biographies on Wikipedia. That number is now 19.96%, a difference of nearly 15 000 new articles, and it feels amazing that some of the editathons that I have organised have helped to close that gap even further. Hopefully it will not be long until 20% is reached!

I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this important project and am grateful for all the knowledge that I have gained about women across the world, from 16th century Scotland to 21st century America. I will certainly be continuing to add to this in my own time and will make it my mission to reappear at a Women in Red editing event in the near future!                                                                                                              

Key Events

Bessie Watson, the 9 year old Scottish suffragette from Edinburgh who had a room at the University
named after her on International Women’s
Day 2024. CC-BY-SA via Wikimedia
Commons

From this internship I have been able to run, talk at and partake in numerous wonderful events, from helping to open the new Bessie Watson Lecture Theatre, to welcoming people to a Burns Night themed editathon (fully fuelled by Irn Bru and shortbread!).

Other notable events included the International Women’s Day editathon. I organised this Wikipedia workshop in order to celebrate the lives and contributions of all the inspiring women the world, past and present, who have dedicated themselves to fighting for women’s rights, women’s education, universal suffrage and global justice by adding them onto Wikipedia. This event was ran in collaboration with the Global Justice Academy at Edinburgh Law School.  Dr Kasey McCall-Smith, Lecturer in Public International Law and Programme Director for the LLM in Human Rights also spoke to us about women in justice at local, national and global levels.

Dr. Jenny Nex giving the guided tour of St Cecilia’s Hall concert room and music museum. Pic by Ellie Whitehead, CC-BY-SA

I also really enjoyed both our World Music Day and Scottish Castles and Witchlore events. Both these editathons saw me work with University of Edinburgh Collections and Heritage teams. For the World Music Day event I organised a tour of St Cecilia’s Music Hall and Museum led by its senior curator Dr Jenny Nex. The Scottish Castles and Witchlore event was a topic close to my heart, so I really wanted to make it as interactive as possible. To help with this, I organised a small exhibition of collections relating to witchcraft and castles with the University Special Collections team. Seeing university archives related to our topic was a big hit, and really brought the content to life.

Map of Scottish Witchcraft, Memorials and Curious Edinburgh tour launch

Map of Scottish Witchcraft, Map of Memorials and Curious Edinburgh walking tour launch.

In this blog I also wanted to reflect on the fantastic launch event that took place on the afternoon of last Wednesday, 23rd October. This event saw the launch of the new version of the Map of Scottish Witchcraft, the new Map of Memorials and new Curious Edinburgh ‘History of Witchcraft’ walking tour of Edinburgh. We celebrated the launch with talks and a Q&A from me, Witchfinder General Intern Ruby Imrie, and Professor Emeritus in Scottish History Julian Goodare, complimented by refreshments of tea, coffee, cake and wine!

I have been lucky enough to work on all three of these projects, which has easily been the highlight of my experience as Assistant

Giving my presentation on the Curious Edinburgh History of Witchcraft tour at the launch event. Picture by me.

Wikimedian in Residence. It has been a fantastic opportunity, which saw me apply my knowledge of the history of early modern Scottish witchcraft. An opportunity that does not come up very often! I researched sites for memorials and wrote their descriptions, wrote introductions and glossaries to add more context to the Map of Scottish Witchcraft, researched and developed a tour of Edinburgh’s witchy locations, learnt how to film and edit videos and ultimately helped to improve the accurate understanding of the history of Scottish witchcraft. It feels amazing to have these projects launched and to see my (and many others!) hard work available to be viewed, shared and enjoyed by everyone.

Overall, I will be sorry to leave this role behind as I have really enjoyed it and got more out of it than I could have ever imagined! I have many thanks to extend to Ewan, who taught me the ropes and encouraged me to dive head-first into all things Wikipedia and beyond. Though finishing my role, I hope to be back editing Wikipedia in my own time as soon as I can!

This blog was written by Ellie Whitehead, Assistant Wikimedian in Residence.

Witch Lore and Scottish Castles September Editathon

Witch Lore and Scottish Castles: a Wikipedia Editathon

Eilean Donan Castle, by Diliff [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons

On Friday 27th September we were joined by castle buffs and witchcraft enthusiasts to help us improve the representation of Scottish witchcraft and heritage on Wikipedia. Our Witch Lore and Scottish Castles editathon event saw people coming together in the Digital Scholarship Centre of the Main Library to add ‘Witchlore’, stories and information relating to early modern witchcraft, to pages about Scottish castles and heritage locations.

A page created during our September editathon, CC-BY-SA by Ellie Whitehead

A number of Wikipedia pages about castles in Scotland neglected to mention their place in the stories of Scotland’s accused witches. The event looked to remedy this, adding some stories about witchcraft and accused witches to pages such as, Craigmillar Castle, Dirleton Castle, St Magnus Cathedral and Falkland Palace.

We also saw some brand-new pages about Scottish castles and heritage locations created! These include, Bass Castle, Logie House and Steading, and Poldrate Mill. Yet, despite our team’s valiant efforts – as ever – there is still more work to be done. See our worklist to take a look at a list of pages that we didn’t get around to improving and creating and have ago yourself! Some special mentions here would be to improve the mention of folklore in the Forvie Nature Reserve, Crichton Castle and Culross.

A diary from the University of Edinburgh Special Collections, CC-BY-SA by Ellie Whitehead

As part of this event, we also hosted an exhibition of material about Scottish castles and witchcraft that the university special collections hold. It was a great addition to the event to be able to get our hands on these items and see some archival material that linked directly to what we were editing.

We got to see hand-painted watercolours and sketches of castles, hand-written legends from the Outer Hebridies about witches living in Kisimul Castle on Barra. We were able to leaf through architectural plans and drawings of Scotland’s Castles and seventeenth-century demonological books, such as George Sinclair’s Satans Invisible World Discovered.

An exhibition of material relating to witchcraft and castles from the University of Edinburgh Special Collections, CC-BY-SA by Ellie Whitehead

Keeping true to our heritage theme, Ruby Imrie also gave us a presentation on the Wikipedia photography project and competition Wiki Loves Monuments! This is an annual international competition that takes place in September which encourages people to go out and take photographs of heritage locations around them and upload them to Wikipedia. Take a look at some of the 1,645 images that were uploaded this September in Scotland in celebration of cultural heritage!

Overall, at this event saw 16 editors create 4 articles and edit 114! A grand total of 236 edits were made and 6000 words were added.  Articles created or edited at this event have been viewed over 5500 times! See our dashboard for a more detailed insight into what we added.

This was a great event, which added some fantastic information about Scotland’s supernatural history and heritage onto Wikipedia. Thank you to all those who attended. Our next major event that we would like to highlight is the launch of our BRAND NEW Map of Scottish Witchcraft, Map of Memorials and Curious Edinburgh Walking Tour. Join us on the 23rd October between 3-4.30pm at Lecture Theatre 2.35 at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Hope to see you there!

Written by Ellie Whitehead, Assistant Wikimedian in Residence

Edinburgh Award 2023/24 Success!

Edinburgh Award 2023/4 Blog

Old College on the evening of the Edinburgh Award celebration event.

This year I had my first experience helping with the Edinburgh Award Wikipedia project. The Edinburgh Award is a scheme which encourages students to volunteer in various projects that are happening around the University whilst undertaking their studies, with the ultimate aim of improving employability and graduate outcomes. Having undertaken an Edinburgh Award, myself during my undergraduate degree, it was a rewarding and full-circle experience to be part of it from the other side.

The Wikipedia project for the Edinburgh Award sees students identify an area of Wikipedia which is in need of improvement or is non-existent. Students are encouraged to pursue projects to do with their own interests and hobbies, these by no means need to be linked with their academic studies. This is what I find particularly fun about choosing a Wikipedia project to help to complete the Edinburgh Award, you can spend time delving into your interests which are independent to your studies.

This year, four fantastic students saw the project to completion. Their projects were diverse, covering a wide range of topics, and culminated in a substantial addition to knowledge on Wikipedia. The projects included:

  • Mental Health in China
  • Islamic History and Culture in addition to contributions to Population Genetics
  • Latin American Literature and Publishing Houses
  • Terms in Neuroscience

Our Fab Four finishers at their celebration evening in the Playfair Library.

At the beginning, our students told it was a challenge to narrow down a topic when there are so many available to you. After a few weeks of trial and error and exploring different avenues they each settled on their chosen topic. They became really interested in researching their topic, spending lots of time fine tuning their project proposals. We encouraged the students to keep fortnightly logs so that we could keep a track of their progress. Students also identified three key graduate skills as areas for improvement. These included communication and interpersonal skills, organisational skills, problem solving, and digital literacy.

To help with this, throughout the project, we put on fortnightly drop-in input sessions so that students could attend and get any support that they might need achieving these goals and working on their projects. It also provided them with the opportunity to work together in the same space, exchanging knowledge and Wikipedia editing experiences. During these sessions, we were also often provided with lovely treats from Creme Eggs to sesame biscuits brought from Kuwait. This face-to-face contact was enjoyed by everyone. It was nice for students to be able to ask us questions and to see each other. A nice community feel was formed, and we could see the fantastic progress being made on projects week by week.

The final assessment saw the students’ update their improvement on their three graduate skills that they had identified at the start of the year. It was great to see that every student felt as if they had improved on each of their identified skills. In terms of employability, these experiences and personal progressions are invaluable. This assessment also needed the students to present their work to their peers and to us. These presentations were fantastic and really showcased the finale of all their hard work. Each student had achieved more than 50 hours of digital Wikipedia volunteering to have completed their projects, and this hard work and dedication was clear in their presentations. There was personal growth in each student, and it was a fantastic opportunity for them to show off all their hard work.

Inside of the lovely Playfair Library.

As a final celebration, to applaud all of the hard work done by each student on the Edinburgh Award they were invited to Edinburgh’s Playfair Library for a drink’s reception with staff, students and employers. This awards evening also featured a talk from the university’s own Peter Sawkins, who won the Great British Bake Off in 2020, who had himself previously completed an Edinburgh Award and even attributed part of his success in the competition to the process of completing the award! It was a great chance for all students to meet a stranger and get networking. It really was the cherry on top of the whole experience.

Overall, some amazing work was completed, with around 51, 000 words being added to English, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic Wikipedia’s. Between them, the group created 18 new articles and improved an impressive 53. Their contributions have amassed a whopping 699, 000 article views. The articles created, translated, and improved include:

Ewan and I with the ‘Fab Four’!

We are really proud of our ‘Fab Four’ students who completed the project. They did an amazing job, and we are looking forward to seeing what new, exciting projects will be brought forward to us next year!

 

This blog was written by Ellie Whitehead, Assistant Wikimedian in Residence.

Happy 23rd Birthday Wikipedia!

(Wikipedia Birthday cake, Airplaneman, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

This post is written by new Assistant Wikimedian in Residence, Ellie Whitehead.

23 years ago, on 15th January 2001, Wikipedia was launched as an independent, online open-source encyclopaedia. In its first year it amassed 20, 000 articles appearing in 18 different languages. Since then, Wikipedia has grown to be an internationally known and respected symbol of open knowledge. Its noble pursuit to make knowledge free and accessible to all still remains central to its cause today. Wikipedia is a place where people come together to learn and share knowledge simultaneously – there really is no place like it!

At the University of Edinburgh, the importance of open-access research and accessible knowledge is showcased through its collaborations with Wikipedia, working with Wikimedia UK. It was the first UK University to employ a Wikimedian in Residence to work on a university-wide basis, Ewan McAndrew. I am Ellie, MScR History student and the most recent recruit to the Wiki team at Edinburgh as Assistant Wikimedian in Residence. This blog will discuss my honest preconceptions and prejudgements when I started, what I have learnt so far about Wikipedia, and a call to arms for participation in the 1Lib1Ref Campaign

My preconceptions and prejudgments about Wikipedia

Being a history student, Wikipedia has been a familiar, reliable life-raft in an ocean of scattered and distorted information on the internet. It has been a tool for scoping out the background knowledge needed for my studies. What was the chronology of the October Revolution? Who was Margaret Beaufort? Who was involved in the Scottish Reformation?

Wikipedia has provided answers to all these questions and more – so why did I always feel guilty for using it? Perhaps it is due to being warned that it was “unreliable” and “untrustworthy” since secondary school. Before my role, I am afraid that I was influenced by these opinions and was under the impression that Wikipedia was not to be trusted, could be edited by anyone, and did not care for reliable sourcing of information.

How wrong I was. It is this common misunderstanding of Wikipedia that stands in the way of it being utilised to its fullest extent. Wikipedia is a place of open knowledge that can be accessed for free by anyone and the largest reference work on the internet. Can anyone edit Wikipedia? Yes and no. Anyone can create a profile on Wikipedia and begin to edit, but this account and its edits are monitored.  In English Wikipedia, an account can only create a new Wikipedia article when it has achieved 10 edits or been active for 4 days. In addition to this Wikipedia’s Notability Guide states that above all, for a new page to be created, it “must be verifiable” and that “reliable, independent” sources must be used to support the article. Notability is a core principle of Wikipedia along with neutral point of view, verifiability, and using reliable sources. My preconceptions have turned around since becoming Wikimedian in Residence, allowing me to understand the true merit of Wikipedia and the checks and balances it has in place.

This brings me on to…

What I have learnt so far about Wikipedia

Since joining in December, my experience of Wikipedia has been an upwards learning curve. Coming from a humanities-based background, the initial introduction to the digital world was, admittedly, daunting. However, the user-friendly and open nature of Wikipedia has meant that I have been able to learn many skills and become confident in them in a short space of time. I came into my role with no knowledge of how to create or even edit an article, no knowledge of the many important and impressive projects Wikipedia endorses, and no concept of just how useful it could be for university students and staff alike. I have learnt this, and more, in my short time working here due to the dedication and support of Ewan [mentioned above] and the community of other friendly Wikimedians in Residence around the UK.

I have learnt how well considered each article is, with the importance of reliable referencing and quality sources being paramount.

(Samhuinn Wikipedia editathon at University of Edinburgh editathon – 31st October 2016, Mihaela Bodlovic, CC-BY-SA licence via Wikimedia Commons)

I have also been able to get a taste of the openness and inclusivity of Wikipedia. The non-profit site is maintained and curated by volunteers. This community’s passion for Wikipedia is clear and adds to the special feel of the organisation at all levels of its knowledge creation, curation, and consumption. Something which I was particularly excited to learn about was the Women in Red project. Of the 1,980,258 biographies on Wikipedia, as of 8th January 2024, only 19.72% (approximately 390,582) of these are the biographies women. This project seeks to combat this by organising targeted events to add more women onto Wikipedia. This is a fantastic project which I am particularly enthusiastic about and want to take every opportunity I can to promote it – so watch this space!

In a personal sense, my role so far has allowed me to gain more digital literacy and expand my technological abilities – much to my amazement! So far in my role, I have learnt quite a bit about Wikipedia and its projects and yet there is still so much to learn. I look forward to exploring more in the future.

(1lib1ref, Wikimedia Foundation, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Potential for Academia

As previously discussed, Wikipedia is not being used to its full potential due to the misconceptions and judgments made about its reliability or trustworthiness. There has been great advances in the role of Wikipedia in academia, seen through the creation of Wikipedia articles being used for assignments for courses here at Edinburgh and the use of Wikidata projects to help open up and explore datasets such as Mapping the Scottish Reformation and the Survey for Scottish Witchcraft. In this role I hope to further encourage academic involvement in Wikipedia throughout the University and to dispel the myth that it should be avoided.

In particular relation to its potential for academia, and in honour of Wikipedia’s birthday I wanted to highlight the 1Lib1Ref Campaign. This campaign gives the ‘gift of knowledge’ by giving something back to Wikipedia. It encourages librarians to participate in Wikipedia by adding citations to articles that need them. You can find articles that need help by using the Citation Hunt tool (Citation Hunt is basically ‘Whack-a-mole’ for “Citation Needed” tagged text in Wikipedia).  It looks to involve information professionals, and everyone really, in the curation of Wikipedia to help improve articles’ reliability and usefulness. This campaign runs from 15th January (today!) to 5th February every year and is a great way to get involved in Wikipedia. Whilst librarians are encouraged to participate, the campaign is not exclusionary, and anyone can take 5 minutes to take part and give a little knowledge back!

Get editing today and help make fun and impactful contributions to the world of knowledge.

Written by Ellie Whitehead, Assistant Wikimedian in Residence.

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