Wikimedian in Residence

Supporting the University of Edinburgh's commitments to digital skills, information literacy, and sharing knowledge openly

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7 years of Wikipedia and the Translation Studies MSc

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On April 25, 2024

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Translation Studies MSc students at the University of Edinburgh, CC-BY-SA via Wikimedia Commons

A Wikipedia assignment has been part of Translation Studies MSc since 2016 when I first met with Dr. Charlotte Bosseaux and convinced her to try a new approach to a pedagogical problem they had; getting the students to have meaningful, published translation practice that they would be motivated to complete. Course leaders were keen to motivate students to complete this translation practice as it was a core objective of the Masters programme.

I work closely with each of the three (rotating) Programme Directors to reflect on the changing needs of the student cohort, the changing makeup of tutors and the course itself so that I can plan ahead to ensure I provide a quality educational experience each time.

Between 2016/2017 and 2018/2019, 20-30 students registered annually in the Translation Studies MSc, which supports a wide variety of languages (Arabic, Chinese, Danish, French, German, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish in 2018/2019). This has since doubled, sometimes trebled, to 50-75 students in recent years and became a remote only offering in 2020-2021 (during lockdown) and a hybrid assignment during 2021-2022 before returning to on campus delivery.

The assignment I designed and lead trains students to select a high quality article and publish a 2,500 word translation in a different language Wikipedia by the end of the semester. The change to make the project an elective one was important to respond to as it came following feedback from some students (during the first iteration) who felt that their “digital labour” ought to be remunerated. Therefore, I now speak at the introductory session to such concerns and of the key benefits by providing context about the charitable Wikimedia Foundation and how the assignment aligns with their core course requirements and course organisers desire for published translation practice.

Responding to the students’ desire for feedback, I co-designed the peer assessment process and I also assess the students’ work in terms of the suitability, quality and level of challenge of the article they choose to translate and, later on, the readiness of their translation for final publication.

The work I have undertaken with course leaders and students to refine, assess and quality assure the published translations over the last seven years further evidences how “introducing collaborative projects with genuine outcomes, we can allow students to coherently develop the competences required for professional translators” (Al-Shehari, 2017, p. 371).

I emailed a survey to students to complete anonymously. The seven questions consisted of a mix of Likert scale responses and free text.

Feedback from students indicated that:

  • they were engaged and enthusiastic about Wikimedia’s mission to share knowledge globally;
  • they were selecting texts they were interested in;
  • they were getting much-needed published translation practice which they could use when getting
    a job;
  • they were learning new skills and developing information and digital literacy; and
  • they were enjoying the assignment.

Participating lecturers were pleased that the students were:

  • getting the necessary practical experience they needed;
  • engaging in problem solving and critical thinking;
  • engaging with how knowledge is shared around the world;
  • writing neutrally for a Wikipedia audience;
  • considering the verifiability of the information they were presented with;
  • evaluating to what extent the translator should ever intervene; and
  • learning academic research and writing skills which should stand them in good stead for their
    dissertation.

Conclusion

Translating between different language Wikipedias is a really impactful and inclusive way to help build understanding between language communities and helps students:

  1. understand how knowledge is created, curated, and contested online.
  2. create a new open educational resource that lasts.
  3. achieve much-needed and meaningful published translation practice ahead of entering the world
    of work.

Our work with MSc Translation Studies students in the 2023/24 academic year has added more than 100, 000 words onto Wikipedia. It has shown these students how to effectively use Wikipedia’s built in Content Translation Tool. In particular, the Isle of Skye (斯凯岛 ) page has been worked on extensively over on Chinese Wikipedia and is a much fuller and better article because of the work that students have undertaken and we also now have a wonderful new article on English Wikipedia about the Origins of the Sami people, translated from Swedish Wikipedia.

References consulted

  1. Al-Shehari, K. (2017). Collaborative learning: trainee translators tasked to translate Wikipedia
    entries from English into Arabic. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 11(4), 357-372.
    https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399x.2017.1359755
  2. Martínez Carrasco, R. (2018). Using Wikipedia as a classroom tool — a translation experience.
    Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd’18).
    https://doi.org/10.4995/head18.2018.8112 McAndrew, E. (2017, May 10).
  3. Word Count tool – counting the prose text in a Wikipedia article. [Online Video]. 10 May 2017.
    https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/1_kfx9b4q5.
  4. Selwyn, N., & Gorard, S. (2016). Students’ use of Wikipedia as an academic resource — patterns of
    use and perceptions of usefulness. The Internet and Higher Education, 28, 8-34.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.08.004
  5. The University of Edinburgh. (2019a). Degree finder [online]. https://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/
    postgraduate/degrees/index.php?r=site/view&edition=2019&id=251
  6. The University of Edinburgh. (2019b). Vision and mission. [online]. https://www.ed.ac.uk/ governance-strategic-planning/content-to-be-reused/vision-and-mission
  7. Wales, J. (2016). Wikimania conference, Esino Lario, Italy. https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.
    org/wiki/Main_Page
Image of a Burns Supper with Evelyn Hollow's hand raising a glass of whisky.

Reflections on Burns Night Editathon and My First Experience of Giving Training

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On February 21, 2024

In Uncategorized

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

On Burns Night, 25th January, I ran my first Wikipedia Editathon event. The event looked to add more Scottish traditions, information about Robert Burns, and Scottish women in literature onto Wikipedia. Together we made 557 total edits, added 15.5k words, created 7 new articles and 9 new images being uploaded onto Wikipedia. Altogether this has amassed 298k article views!

Cast of Robert Burns' skull - the front

(Casts of Robert Burns’ skull held at the Anatomical Museum in the University of Edinburgh, Malcolm MacCullum, Anatomical Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Take a look at some of the articles created and improved:

Excitingly, we added pictures of – along with an article about – Robert Burns’ skull to Wikipedia. A cast of the skull is held within the collections of Edinburgh University’s Anatomical Museum, who kindly provided us with the images to be added onto Wikipedia.

Other images added, including updating the images of Burns Supper and Haggis to make them look more appetising, such as the photograph of Macsween’s Whisky Cream Sauce, added by Melissa Highton, and added images of a Scottish Ceilidh to the Ceilidh Wikipedia page.

Picture of Macsween whiskey cream sauce

(Macsween whiskey cream sauce added to the Macsween (Butcher) article, Melissa Highton, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

With this new event, I had my first experience of providing training on how to edit Wikipedia. People attending the event had varying levels of experience, which made for a very supportive atmosphere and an engaging audience. It is always nice to have both an in person and online presence, with those online being equally as supported as those in the room.

Photo of Bessie Watson, Scottish Suffragette, aged 9

(Bessie Watson, Scottish Suffragette, aged 9, unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Everyone managed to publish at least one article, there was a great sense of satisfaction in the room which certainly felt very rewarding…however, this satisfaction may have had something to do with the great Scottish snacks we had on offer (Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers, Irn Bru and Haggis flavoured crisps)!

With this experience under my belt, I am now turning my head to look at the next Women in Red Editathon event that I am running along with Ewan on the 8th March, International Women’s Day. This event will be in collaboration with the Global Justice Academy (GJA) and will see Dr Kasey McCall-Smith, Lecturer in Public International Law and Programme Director for the LLM in Human Rights from the GJA speak to us about women in justice at local, national and global levels. We will 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.

If you would like to join us at this exciting event, please follow this link to our Eventbrite page and get your ticket!

Imagine a gender equal world, IWD2024 event poster by E. McAndrew, all images CC-BY-SA

Happy 23rd Birthday Wikipedia!

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On January 15, 2024

In Uncategorized

(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.

Edinburgh Award participants sat around a boardroom table in the shadow of Edinburgh castle at final showcase event, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew, University of Edinburgh

“Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia” – the Edinburgh Award

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On April 7, 2023

In Uncategorized

We know that many students are involved in activities alongside their studies such as volunteering, part-time work, and getting involved in the University community.

To help these activities to stand out from the crowd, our University has a new Award for “Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia” to sit beside other available Edinburgh Awards– the Edinburgh Award is a programme that allows students to get official recognition for their involvement in extracurricular activities and demonstrate their digital capabilities to employers.

Edinburgh Award participants sat around a boardroom table in the shadow of Edinburgh castle at final showcase event, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew, University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh Award participants sat around a boardroom table in the shadow of Edinburgh castle at final showcase event, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew, University of Edinburgh

There are many different types of Edinburgh Award activity students can undertake but Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia focuses on developing 3 Graduate Attributes (e.g. digital literacy, written communication, assertiveness & confidence etc.) over the course of 55-80 hours of work and providing evidence of demonstrable learning, reflection and impact. These hours are staggered over the October to end of March period punctuated by 3 main mandatory “input” sessions.

In the first, Aspiring, in October the students self -assess themselves against the Graduate Attributes and select three to develop as part of the award. They also select a topic area of Wikipedia they wish to improve and submit a 400 word action plan for how they plan to develop their chosen Graduate Attributes and how they’ll deliver impact.

Once they have had training and researched their topic areas, the 2nd Input Session, Developing, in late December, requires them to re-assess if their Graduate Attribute ranking has changed, and submit a completed Fortnightly Log of Activities designed to evidence their work to date and their reflections on how they are progressing towards their personal project goals. We hold fortnightly group research sessions in the library (because not everything is online) to help their research and allow them to edit in  a social and supportive environment where they can ask questions and seek help; both from the Wikimedian in Residence, and from each other. 

Example student project on Francophone Literature, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew, University of Edinburgh

The final Input Session, Owning, is about coming together to share their project outcomes and reflections as well as ensuring the students get the opportunity to tie all this in with their future goals and how they will communicate about their Edinburgh Award experience to their peers, academic advisors or employers. This session takes place at end of March and their final submissions are an 800 word report or 3-6 minute video presentation reflecting on both their impact achieved and the development achieved in their 3 chosen graduate attributes.

Topics suggested by students to improve online

More interestingly, are the topics the students wanted to write about. Climate change, Covid-19, LGBT History, Black History, Women artists, Women in STEM. Marginalised groups, underrepresented topics, some of the biggest and most pressing challenges in the world today. This shows me that students recognise and are intrinsically motivated by the importance of addressing knowledge gaps and improving the world around them.

Here’s a short video of an example project on LGBTQ+ history and women of the MENA region:

 The final 10

We started in October with a large cohort off 44 interested students but this reduced to 10 by Input 3 but this was to be expected and is in line with other Edinburgh Award programmes similarly asking students to undergo over 55 hours in extracurricular volunteering.

These ten ‘knowledge activist’ heroes have been put forward to achieving the Award this year. 

The projects

  1. Witch hunting: past and present day
  2. Visual culture: Artworks depicting Edinburgh
  3. Francophone literature
  4. Plant pathology
  5. Buddhism and Artificial Intelligence
  6. LGBTQ history and women in the MENA region
  7. Byzantium Greece and Cavafy’s poetry
  8. International development and human rights
  9. History of menstruation
  10. Northumberland Folklore and coverage of Edinburgh related artists, banks, and writers by using museum exhibits 

The outcomes

76,000 words have so far been added to Wikipedia and over 876 references to pages viewed almost 3 million times already! 

41 articles created, 157 improved, 35 images uploaded and articles translated in German, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian and French including the accused Bavarian witch Anna Maria Schwegelin (translated from German Wikipedia) and Crime of Solidarity (translated from French Wikipedia) which is a concept coined in France by human right’s activists in order to fight against organised illegal immigration networks as well as fight against laws that prevent refuge for refugees.

Reflections on the Edinburgh Award. CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew

Notable new pages also include:

Here’s a short video of an example project on the history of menstruation:

Here’s a short video of an example project on Witch hunting (past and present):

Quotes from the students

“During the Wikipedia project, Critical Thinking skills were crucial to ensure the information presented was accurate, unbiased, and relevant. As the research progressed, I noticed that my skill improved as I had to analyse and evaluate the information gathered. One of the key improvements in the skills was the ability to identify and evaluate different sources of information. Initially, I relied heavily on a few sources for my research, but as the project progressed, I began considering a wider range of sources. I made an effort to evaluate each source based on its credibility, relevance, and objectivity, which helped me to identify and include the most accurate information.”

“I think that I have helped improve information accessibility on Wikipedia, as one of the most widely used free encyclopaedias I have felt it important to fill gaps in information largely concerning the LGBTQ community and women, as both of these areas are often forgotten about. I think having access to marginalised communities stories, achievements and contributions is a really important value, by contributing to these topics I have hopefully made information available to people around the world.”

“Once, I completed my second article I felt more self-assured and assertive on what was appropriate writing to upload onto Wikipedia. I had created an article on one of Cavafy’s poems, which is one of my favourite poems from his anthology. That could’ve also been a contributor to the overall experience too, since producing something which engages with one of your likes makes the activity a little more bearable. As I overcame this barrier, I was able to expand as well as develop my skills by editing as well as creating a lot more articles on Wikipedia. As it stands right now, I have contributed 10k words on Wikipedia. Although the first half of this process was excruciatingly slow, after overcoming my fears and worries I was keener with contributing on Wikipedia and practically spent most days changing, improving, or producing articles. ”

“Being a part of writing communities like Wikipedia has helped me to improve not only my writing but also my editing and proofreading skills. I have learned to use plain language, avoid jargon and technical terms, and organise information logically and coherently, thanks to Wikipedia’s style guidelines.”

“Doing this award has helped me make significant progress made on improving my independent research skills. For example, I think that over the course of my project, I have become better at picking out relevant information from very long sources and not spending too much time reading and fussing over smaller less significant details. In addition, I am more proficient at finding sources through Google Scholar and DiscoverEd and have also learnt where to look when struggling to find more information about a topic e.g. using good quality sources referenced in the bibliographies of journals and books I had already found to help grow my source lists.”

“Overall, my confidence to make bolder edits and create quality articles on Wikipedia has grown significantly since I started my project and I now feel that I can have a more significant and active presence on the site. Editing and writing articles about witch-hunting has been incredibly enlightening and rewarding and I want to continue to edit about this important topic after I finish the award.”

“My digital literacy skills have greatly improved compared with when I started my Wikipedia research project. Since the project involved extensive online research, it required me to engage with a wide range of digital tools and technologies. Through this process, I have developed proficiency in various areas of digital literacy, such as information literacy, media literacy, and digital communication.”

“My Wikipedia project on the history of menstruation has had a positive impact on others in several ways. Firstly, the project has helped raise awareness and understanding of an often-overlooked aspect of women’s health and history. By providing accurate and accessible information on the history of menstruation, the project has helped to demystify a topic that has long been stigmatized and taboo. I corrected a key part of the history of menstrual cups, which were first patented in the US in 1867, whereas before the article only included that the first patent for a commercial cup was in 1937. My article on Menstruation and humoral medicine has filled a gap in the content on Wikipedia, and highlighted the ambiguities in the ways that people viewed menstruation in the early modern period.”

“I wrote an article on Mary Marjory MacDonald, and significantly edited articles on Edwin Chiloba and the Signares. Mary was nicknamed ‘the Scottish Queen of Thieves’, and I believe it is important to represent more women on Wikipedia, especially figures who do not fit into traditional gender roles. This is also the case for the Signares, who were a group of women who acquired wealth and power in colonial Senegal. In addition, representing African LGBTQ+ activists such as Edwin Chiloba is important, since they are a group often neglected on Wikipedia.”

“I decided to focus on creating new pages to maximise my impact as some very important parts of the history of Francophone literature were missing, such as The Colonial System Unveiled, one of the earliest critiques of colonialism, which is unfortunately not recognised widely enough as a significant historical anticolonial text. I also decided to emphasise the contributions of women to Francophone Caribbean and African writing, as they can be overlooked in this area.”

“I hope that my contributions can help other students like me, such as those studying French or taking the course that inspired me to pursue this project. On a wider level, I also think my project can help increase the awareness of Francophone literature among English speakers. I believe it is very much underappreciated and people do not realise how much influence Francophone African and Caribbean thought have had on literary criticism even in an Anglophone context.”

Here’s a short video of an example project on improving topic coverage of Francophone literature:

Here’s a short video of an example project on improving topic coverage of artworks depicting Edinburgh:

In conclusion

Example student project researching artists,writers and banks related to Edinburgh. CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew, University of Edinburgh

“There are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh street lamps“.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s words (below) are inscribed in Makar’s Court, Edinburgh. In taking this photo and sharing it openly to Wikimedia Commons and inserting it into the Makar’s Court page, the Edinburgh Award student has brought these words to my attention and helped raise my awareness that there are clearly other lovely stars in Edinburgh. Ten student stars in particular. And I have told them that they should all be enormously proud of their achievements this year.

Inscription of Robert Louis Stevenson quote in Makars’ Court, CC-BY-SA by Erisagal via Wikimedia Commons

One final student project!

Here’s a short video of an example project on improving topic coverage of plant pathology on Wikipedia:

Recovering Histories – Improving Equality and Diversity Online

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On April 6, 2023

In Uncategorized

Recovering Histories event: 3 student researchers looked at the gaps on Wikipedia and where important histories were not (yet) represented online. CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew

Three students co-authored an application to take part in a Student Experience Grant project over a 14-week time period, learning how to edit Wikipedia and how to fill in diversity gaps on the website:

  • Eleanor– PhD Student researching LGBTQ+ History.
  • Sian – PhD student researching Black History.
  • Kirsty  – Undergraduate student researching Gender History.

Each student specialised in a particular aspect of diversity which Wikipedia was lacking coverage on. These were black history, LGBTQ+ history and women’s history. Through these three specialisations each student was able to increase their knowledge in their specialised area, digging through Edinburgh’s history in the matter. For example, Kirsty, one of the students, was able to delve into the University’s rich sporting history and learn about the impressive sportswomen that spent time at Edinburgh University. Kirsty also showed off a poster presentation on the Student Experience Grant project at the University’s GenderEd annual showcase & networking event.

Through the project the students developed knowledge of the gaps on Wikipedia and created worklists of pages in need of creation or updating to improve diversity of representation on Wikipedia. These worklists were utilised in a final end of project event, with 50-60 signups. The hybrid event was held in the Project Room of 50 George Square with students, staff and members of the public taking part in learning new digital and information literacy skills and contributing their scholarship openly to improve coverage of, and understanding about, LGBTQ+ History, Gender History and Black History in Scotland.

This event included many University of Edinburgh students who were introduced to editing Wikipedia, through a led tutorial, and given the aforementioned pre-researched worklists to help contribute to Wikipedia as a whole. The event featured a panel discussion and display of the work of the three primary students involved in the project, educating those in attendance about the disparities within Wikipedia and how they can help improve this as information activists.

Recovering Histories event, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew, University of Edinburgh

The event also included representatives from University of Edinburgh, University of Dundee, Wikimedia UK, the Devil’s Porridge Museum, Sussex University, University of Cape Town, Swansea University, Birkbeck University London, UCL, University of Leeds, the National Gallery of Ireland, Victoria University of Wellington, Kiel University, ZBW Leibniz, Manchester Metropolitan University, Staffordshire University, National Galleries Scotland, Arts University Bournemouth, University of Kent, Lothian Health Service Archives.

In addition, the structure of the project allowed all three students to specialise in their interests. This allowed each student to delve further into an area of interest/specialisation which was rewarding for all involved. They each created a poster which was printed out to display in the final end of project editing event for all to see.

Event page with worklists created:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh/Recovering_Histories

Main learning points

  • Gained professional experience using their research skills outside of their main study.
  • Expanded awareness of information activism as a whole and the role of information in dictating awareness of those often ignored by society.
  • Had the opportunity to expand their network by making connections with the Scottish Portrait Gallery.
  • Organised and hosted an edit-a-thon at the University.
  • Eleanor has subsequently organised her own editathon on LGBTQ+ art on Wikipedia and been in discussions about presenting at the Queering Wikipedia conference 2023.

Scotland, Slavery and Black Histories poster, CC-BY-SA by Sian Davies

Reflections from Sian:

“I have been looking at Black history, specifically focusing on Scotland’s links to transatlantic slavery to try to address the silences on Wikipedia related to this topic. By adding in information to existing pages as well as creating new ones, I hope this work, however marginally, contributes to public understanding of the varied and widespread connections between Caribbean slavery and the making of modern Britain. Examples include adding in details such as William Wright’s, a renowned Scottish Botanist, ownership of enslaved people and how he developed an interest in botany while in the Caribbean, and adding in William Forbes of Callandar’s, a Scottish industrialists, connection to transatlantic slavery through his production of sugar boiling pans sold to planters in the Caribbean. I also developed a new page for Leith Sugar House, to show how some of built environment of Scotland is also connected the Caribbean and the profits made from slavery. “

Gender History poster, by Kirsty Vass-Payne, CC-BY-SA

Reflections from Kirsty:

“Higher Education Institutions, and the student bodies within them, are heavily involved within diversity-based research and movements throughout society.  However all too often work fails to extend beyond the reach of the university community. Information activism is an often unappreciated but vital part of diversity and equality movements. Work to increase representation of marginalised communities online helps to make the histories, achievements and movements of communities suppressed in mainstream media available to all. Wikipedia is the perfect website for such work. Further Wikipedia involvement can be vital in transforming this information to a wider community.

Firstly it does not occur to many that they themselves can, and should, contribute their knowledge to Wikipedia. Before entering this project two out of three of the students had not contributed to Wikipedia before. This is often the first, and primary, hurdle to many in being part of the Wikipedia editing community. Herein, raising awareness of the ease at which one can contribute to Wikipedia is vital alongside providing a space in which to edit with support.Through this project Ewan McAndrew assisted the students in entering Wikipedia as editing and taught them the basic understandings and rules necessary to contribute. Although these can be easily learnt online, live teaching can be invaluable in quickly setting up students to edit Wikipedia. Running events on specific topics which include mini tutorials on how to edit are invaluable to adding information on Wikipedia. This is as they target those who are not currently engaged. The more people that are taught to edit Wikipedia, the more who can contribute their wealth of knowledge to Wikipedia. 

Wikipedia is a very large website, and as such the breadth of information that can be added to or edited it never ending. This can be a daunting prospect to many. As such it is much simpler, and more manageable to focus particularly on one area. From here you can create a related a worklist of pages to be added/edited, including details of what is missing. Often half the job on Wikipedia is establishing the gap in Wikipedia as there is often the incorrect presumption that everything is already there. If creating a worklist is untenable there are many project pages/worklists already available that you can work through with students. Examples of this include Women in Red which aims to create pages for women of note.”

Researching LGBTQ+ History poster and the rich important stories to tell, CC-BY-SA by Eleanor Capaldi

Reflections from Eleanor:

“The strand I’ve been exploring on this project is diversifying LGBTQ+ records. These could be of individuals, organisations, projects, either historical or contemporary. Filling in the gaps of LGBTQ+ history is necessary to reflect the diversity of society over time, and to readdress inequalities that have seen these identities suppressed or erased in record. Doing so also has a role to play in validating LGBTQ+ communities as being connected to something larger, this history partly acting as defence against suggestions that being LGBTQ+ is new, and therefore temporary, to be changed. It’s a way to say – we’ve always been here. Given that the historical landscape regarding sexuality and gender has evolved over time, from the law to language, it can sometimes prove challenging to attribute LGBTQ+ identities, even when there are indications. It is a catch-22 – to be accessible on a site like Wikipedia where there needs to be evidence, but for LGBTQ+ lives such evidence may have been erased, or alternatively exist, but as a result of primary sources like oral histories, rather than secondary.

That said there are valuable records that have been created and contributed to, and research projects and efforts to establish and expand LGBTQ+ sources that do exist, and they are increasing all the time. Given Wikipedia’s prominence, their inclusion matters. As such, I’ve been exploring the history of the Lothian Gay and Lesbian Switchboard, the first such telephone support service in the whole of the UK, which didn’t have a Wikipedia entry until it was developed as part of this project. Through researching this organisation, in collaboration with Archivist Louise Neilson at the University of Edinburgh (who hold the Switchboard archives and have recently received Welcome Trust funding to catalogue its contents), it has opened up so many avenues of people and events that were connected to a significant and important part of LGBTQ+ history in Scotland. It is a privilege to be able to contribute in even a small way to place this piece of Scottish LGBTQ+ history into the Wikipedia puzzle. “

New Wikipedia pages about:

Improved pages also include:

In terms of challenges, due to the secondary source nature of Wikipedia there were issues encountered with getting archival information on to Wikipedia, which requires a step in between. Had there been a larger project timeframe there would have been more time to do this. However, due to the short nature of the project archival information was simply used less as it would have been too time consuming to use more.

The legacy of the project

The worklist, gaps and resources identified, still exist and the work will have a further legacy as the work will be continued with other student editors contributing to it either through the student Edinburgh Award for ‘Digital Volunteering  with Wikipedia’ (Oct-March each year) topics or through the monthly Wikipedia editing workshops run by the University’s Digital Skills team. This project has been a source of inspiration for students taking part in the aforementioned Edinburgh Award for the kind of ‘knowledge activism’ and the agency it demonstrates students can have.

Moreover, the three students involved in the project dictated the strands of their research according to interests found along the way, and lines of success in research. As such there was always interesting work to be done and it allowed the opportunity to have conversations with, meet and work with people inside and outside of the University; to raise awareness and provoke ideas of what more could, and should be, done in future.

Wikipedia, Student Activism and the Ivory Tower

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On April 21, 2022

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This was a talk presented at the LILAC 2022 Information Literacy Conference held at Manchester Metropolitan University on 11-13 April 2022. The slides will be uploaded shortly.

0) Intro slide: Video of Manchester Metropolitan University’s Wikipedia page being edited.

Anyone can click “Edit” on any page on Wikipedia to improve its open-licensed information with verifiable facts. E.g. I’ve added a sentence to the page for Manchester Metropolitan University about it hosting the LILAC Information Literacy conference this year.  Backed up with a citation.

Anyone can edit, yes, but you have to CITE WHAT YOU WRITE.

1) Welcome slide

Good afternoon everyone – welcome!

My name is Ewan McAndrew and I have worked since January 2016 at the University of Edinburgh as the Wikimedian in Residence.

I presented at LILAC in 2019 about our work supporting Wikipedia in the curriculum and you can read more about that work in our Booklet of Case Studies of Wikipedia in UK education at bit.ly/wikicasestudies

Jesse Ewing Glasgow

2) Scotland, Slavery and Black History slide

We’re actually updating that booklet to include 5 more case studies of work conducted during lockdown including our work with History Students to re-examine Scotland’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and a more positive examination of Black History including creating new articles about Jesse Ewing Glasgow and more.

3) History of Art UG course programme slide

Another new case study has been working with History of Art students to improve coverage of non-Western art in Wikipedia so that even if you don’t know about the visual culture of the Ummayads in Syria (of which we have a new article written by students) you will still encounter Islamic art on pages about inkwells, pitchers, bowls and more.

4) Wikipedia and Academic Libraries slide

Another great resource relevant to this audience is the new open access book on Wikipedia and Academic Libraries published last year and we’ve contributed a chapter focusing on the work of the last 5 years improving Wikipedia’s coverage about women in Scotland and changing the way stories are told.

5) Mentimeter slide

All that said, to warm you for my talk today, tell me via the power of Menti – what is your favourite Wikipedia article? Answers here.

6) News article slide

While we wait for your answers, here are some recent news article headlines I searched for in Google about Wikipedia.

7) Prospect Magazine quote slide

This last headline I like from Prospect magazine last month as it posited the question… “Who gets to define what’s true online?...

 “In practical terms, truth is what Google’s knowledge graph … can deliver to its users.

Google’s knowledge graph is descended primarily from Wikipedia and Wikidata, an open-source collection of facts derived from Wikipedia, the remarkable participatory encyclopedia that, in the past 20 years, has become a core part of our collective knowledge infrastructure.”

Which reminded me of this earlier quote from Danah Boyd in 2017’s Did Media Literacy Backfire?

“Too many students I met were being told that Wikipedia was untrustworthy and were, instead, being encouraged to do research. As a result, the message that many had taken home was to turn to Google and use whatever came up first. They heard that Google was trustworthy and Wikipedia was not.”

8) 2nd Mentimeter question

Now 2nd question – if indeed “Search is the Way We Live now” then is Wikipedia part of the Information Literacy conversation at your workplace/institution? If so, how? If not, why not do you think?

9) Video slide

While you think about that I’ll show you this video to give you food for thought, with contributions from staff, students and Academic Support Librarians at the University of Edinburgh. 

The Edinburgh Seven – our first editing event in Feb 2015

10) Edinburgh Seven slide

It’s now 7 years since our first experiment with Wikipedia, to improve topic coverage of the Edinburgh Seven on Wikipedia. The first female students matriculated at a British university when they fought for their right to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

The Edinburgh Seven now have their degrees, posthumously. And a blue plaque commemorating their fight for the right to study. We’ll never know how many stop to read that blue plaque but we do know how many are reading their Wikipedia page. Thousands.

11) Allison Littlejohn slide

This group editing event was evaluated by Professor Allison Littlejohn and referenced in her 2019 LILAC keynote – her research further cementing our belief that engaging with Wikipedia and in conversations over copyright, neutral point of view, open access, verifiability of sources, academic referencing, writing for a lay audience and issues of underrepresentation and invisibility online were absolutely pertinent in supporting the professional development of staff and students and helping us walk the walk when it comes to sharing knowledge outside of the Ivory Tower. Becoming knowledge activists.

12) WiR slide

Since 2016, the role of Wikimedian in Residence provides a free central service to all staff and students, working alongside other digital skills trainers, learning technologists and library colleagues and our OER Service to support the university to explore and better understand how knowledge is created, curated, and disseminated online. Beyond this, what they can get out of the learning and teaching experience from contributing to Wikipedia and understanding how the sausage is made.

13) Reframing Wikipedia slide

Our students are using Wikipedia now, today and finding it useful in a clarificatory and orientating way. We need to support them in developing good practice.

So we need to see it less as a problem of passive consumption and think instead of Wikipedia as a form of learning technology that we can actively engage with and contribute to and gain so much from in terms of core competencies and transferable graduate attributes.

14) Promoting Knowledge Equity slide

This was our starting point in many ways. Working with the Wikimedia projects affords many opportunities to support transferable graduate attributes, information and digital and data literacy, but it also promotes this idea of knowledge equity.

As part of this evolving in thinking about how we engage with Wikipedia, we wanted to push on and do more. In the pandemic, the uni had something of a hiring freeze but we still wanted to offer students the opportunities for internships for roles our CIO could see merit in as being critical for our institutional mission and help get us where we needed to be.

15) Hannah Rothmann slide

Hannah Rothmann worked a 12 week internship in lockdown 2020, creating 20 short videos for different aspects of Wikipedia editing which she embedded in a 40 page website she created. All with the purpose of providing staff and students with one-stop shop for resources they needed to understand and engage with Wikipedia, be they at our institution or anywhere else. For this work she recently won an Open Education Global award.

Wikimedia internships at the University of Edinburgh since 2019

16) More Wiki internships slide

Two more interns, Erin and Clea, improved the website in 2021 and focused on adding new sections on Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and WikiSource. Our new interns for this Summer 2022 will focus on expanding our work on the Map of Accused Witches site.

These internships were my way in to work more closely with our Careers Service and discussing trialling new ways to support students through also offering accreditation for the work they did outside the curriculum.

17) The Edinburgh Award slide

We know that many students are involved in activities alongside their studies such as volunteering, part-time work, and getting involved in the University community.

To help these activities to stand out from the crowd, our University has worked to pilot a new Award for “Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia” to sit beside other available Edinburgh Awards– the Edinburgh Award is a programme that allows students to get official recognition for their involvement in extracurricular activities and demonstrate their digital capabilities to employers.

18) Graduate Attribute slide

There are many different types of Edinburgh Award activity students can undertake but Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia focuses on developing 3 Graduate Attributes over the course of at least 50 hours of work and providing evidence of demonstrable learning, reflection and impact. The 50 hours are staggered over the December to May period punctuated by 3 main input sessions.

19) Three inputs slide

In the first, Aspiring, in December the students self -assess themselves against the Graduate Attributes and select three to develop as part of the award. They also select a topic area of Wikipedia they wish to improve and submit a 400 word action plan for how they plan to develop their chosen Graduate Attributes and how they’ll deliver impact.

20) Fortnightly Log slide

Once they have had training and researched their topic areas, the 2nd Input Session, Developing, at end of January requires them to re-assess if their Graduate Attribute ranking has changed, and submit a completed Fortnightly Log of Activities designed to evidence their work to date  and their reflections on how they are progressing towards their personal project goals.

The final Input Session, Owning, is about coming together to share their project outcomes and reflections as well as ensuring the students get the opportunity to ties all this in with their future goals and how they will communicate about their Edinburgh Award experience to their peers, academic advisors or employers. This session will take place at end of May and their final submission will be an 800 word report or 3-5 minute video presentation.

21) Course level slide

Of the 23 student pilot group – the vast majority of applicants were female. Over 80%. Bucking the 10-15% of editors on Wikipedia normally.

They also tended to come from Undergraduate courses. 60%. 

22) Course disciplines slide

Of the disciplines, History of Art and Physics backgrounds were well represented. Which I believe is owing to recent project work with these departments and a willingness of the School Secretary to alert interested student groups.

Topics suggested by students to improve online

23) Topics slide

More interestingly, are the topics the students wanted to write about. Climate change, Covid-19, LGBT History, Black History, Women artists, Women in STEM. Marginalised groups, underrepresented topics, some of the biggest and most pressing challenges in the world today. This shows me that students recognise and are intrinsically motivated by the importance of addressing knowledge gaps and improving the world around them.

24) The final 11

The initial 23 reduced to 11 by Input 3 but this was to be expected and is in line with other Edinburgh Award programmes similarly asking students to undergo 50 hours plus in extracurricular volunteering. 19,000 words have so far been added to Wikipedia and over 300 references to pages viewed almost 900,000 times. This is only a pilot of course and I have much I have to reflect on myself.

25) Reflections

Like how best to support students to ascertain what is Wikipedia missing when that task is seemingly endless, how to structure student time and support without losing elements of personalisation, choice and flexible working that they like, how best to engender a sense of a self-sustaining community and collaboration between students and between the students and hive mind expertise across the university and beyond, also how best to quantify and quality assure what counts as a significant body of work and impact on Wikipedia.

26) Conclusion

I have much I have learnt myself from this trial run and it is not over yet. But when turning on the news seems to reflect the darkest of times of late, I have found faith that students find this work meaningful and relevant for their studies, for their employability and for their personal development as both empowered online citizens and card-carrying members of the human race.

Their willingness to communicate their scholarship openly for the good of all and to be the change they want to see has real and I hope profound potential which can be enhanced and greatly expanded in future iterations. Encouraging an army of student volunteers to be ambitious, reach out, learn, collaborate, to delve deep into the libraries and archives, devouring knowledge, synthesising it, finding the gaps and the people willing and able to help fill them. Everything connects after all, or it should. We can uncover hidden histories, build on prior learning, illuminate the darkness and lift each other up.

27) Final slide

So my question for you – how can Wikimedia best support you and wiki link with your work? Because that’s what this work is all about.

Down the rabbit hole with Wikipedia – LILAC 2022

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On April 13, 2022

In Uncategorized

Image of couple doing high five
High Five – by Bgubitz at English Wikipedia, CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

I asked LILAC Information Literacy Conference 2022 delegates what their favourite Wikipedia pages were and here’s what they answered:

  1. Boris Johnson (It’s not flattering)
  2. The Dyatlov Pass incident
  3. Dolly Parton
  4. Cellar door
  5. High five
  6. Mary Shelley
  7. Loch_Ness_Monster
  8. The Sopranos
  9. List of Manufacturing processes
  10. Disambiguation (disambiguation)
  11. List of The Simpsons guest stars
  12. Defenestrations of Prague
  13. Marxist economics
  14. List of Never Mind The Buzzcocks episodes
  15. The ABBA page
  16. Lists_of_films#By_genre
  17. Snapper (band) – the only Wikipedia entry I created as an assignment for Library qual.
  18. The one about the first women doctors in Edinburgh which only got added by Wikipedia after a protest at its absence. Edinburgh Seven.
  19. Toilet_paper_orientation
  20. Wolf Alice Band page
  21. Biographies i.e. person information pages
  22. As Slow As Possible
  23. A Cultural History of the Buttocks
  24. Narwhals
  25. Grey_Owl
  26. Cats_and_the_Internet
  27. Diggers
  28. N/a
  29. LILAC
  30. I don’t have one, sorry….
  31. Any public figure with a “controversies” section
  32. All Wikipedia

Thanks all! Have fun reading these on your way home 🙂

Further links:

Our University of Edinburgh website with lots of ‘how to’ advice.

Changing the Way Stories Are Told – Chapter 13 in Wikipedia and Academic Libraries open access book.

Is Wikipedia part of the Information & Digital Literacy conversation/strategy at your institution? If yes, how? If not, why not?

LILAC answered:

“Often discouraged to use for university assignments but acknowledged as providing good research starting points with citations.”

“Not part of the overarching strategy, but we signpost to it as a resource for fact checking/evaluating source credibility in our information literacy workshops.”

“We do talk about it and we have moved away of being wikipedia-negative to Wikipedia aware. Its a good starting point.”

“Yes, we suggest Wikipedia as a starting point of researching ideas and concepts, but stress that it can be edited by anyone, and just as we expect citations in their work, we should expect the same from Wikipedia pages.”

“Yes, we use it as a way to demonstrate how peer review works, talk page is great!”

“I tell students that they can use Wikipedia as part of the research process (eg to ground knowledge or a jumping off point) but that their final assignments should cite stronger academic sources”

“In English schools there is now an acceptance students will use Wikipedia first but then are told not to reference it but find the original source.”

“Yes – decolonising articles on arts themes. Adding artists and practitioners of colour, who represent British diaspora, international artists in UK, etc. Also resources.”

“As a student, we’re still discouraged from using wikipedia as a resource, though I still use it outside of university”.

“Part of conversation I have with students in searches. Not in strategy. Also organising a Wikipedia editathon.”

“Yes, its a perfect example of applying information literacy in real life: both in creating articles and reading them.”

“Yes. I have delivered sessions on using wikipedia specifically to identify information gaps from underrepresented voices and using research skills to fill those gaps.”

“Not really, but if a student says they can’t use wiki I say that it’s not necessarily the worse and can be a v good start to begin to understand a topic”

“No, we tend to direct students towards scholarly material. Assumption is that Google/Instagram/Wikipedia already used extensively but are unfamiliar with specific library resources”

“No – but it’s something I personally talk to students about especially when it comes to reading up on background information, looking at lists of references, finding timelines, etc.”

“Often discouraged to use for university assignments but acknowledged as providing good research starting points with citations.”

“Yes – advise that it’s a good place to start but not for use as a reference.”

“We do talk about it and we have moved away of being wikipedia-negative to Wikipedia aware. Its a good starting point.”

“Yes, its a perfect example of applying information literacy in real life: both in creating articles and reading them.”

“Yes, we use it as a way to demonstrate how peer review works, talk page is great!”

“Yes. We use it in our first year info lit courses as an example of a place to go to learn background info, instigate their curiosity, and find additional sources.”

“It’s not, because it is not viewed as a reliable source.”

“No, academics are not interested”

“I tell students that they can use Wikipedia as part of the research process (eg to ground knowledge or a jumping off point) but that their final assignments should cite stronger academic sources”

“No …
Hmm why not? That’s a good question”

“Yes – using it to teach criticality and citation by getting students to edit Wikipedia”.

“Yes.”

Wikimedia and the Diversity of Languages online – Guest post by Clea Strathmann

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On July 9, 2021

In Uncategorized

Globally, over 7,000 languages are spoken – only around 4% of people are native English speakers. Despite this, English holds the title of the “Language of the internet”.  It dominates with Chinese almost 50% of global web traffic with the top ten languages accounting for 76.9 percent of global internet users. The majority of African and Indigenous languages are not recognised by Google’s search engine. 

When an English speaker searches for something on Google, a Wikipedia article typically appears as a top hit, often as a convenient infobox at the side of the browser. This is because English Wikipedia has over 6 million articles. Wikipedias in other languages are more limited – only two other Wikipedias (Cebuano and Swedish) have over 3 million articles, and the 20 largest Wikipedias have around 1 million entries each. Many of these articles are comparatively shorter than those in English Wikipedia. 

Percentage of Wikipedia articles in each language group – Western European language groups dominate Wikipedia.

This lack of diversity restricts a significant portion of the world from access to knowledge that is readily-available to English speakers, and disproportionately affects those who live in less-developed regions who may not speak any of the internet’s other dominant languages. Access to knowledge is vital for bridging the understanding between languages and cultures. 

Knowledge creates understanding – understanding is sorely lacking in today’s world. – Katherine Maher, Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation. 

The United Nations has, as part of their sustainable development goals, emphasised a need for equitable education and lifelong learning. To enable this, resources of knowledge must be available in all languages. But alongside access to knowledge, the lack of linguistic diversity is a pressing issue for smaller languages, including indigenous languages which are dying out at a rate of two languages per month. For speakers of these languages, their extinction may also reflect the extinction of their culture and identity. 

Watch Dr. Sara Thomas speak about Scots Wikipedia at the Arctic Knot.

The role of Wikimedia in improving linguistic diversity 

Wikipedia is attempting to increase global access to knowledge, and it is one of the aims of The Wikimedia Foundation to ensure that knowledge is diverse, inclusive, and accessible to all. When considering linguistic diversity, the aim is for the number of Wikipedia articles to be evenly distributed across languages. Theoretically, this could be done by simply translating articles from one language Wikipedia into another. 

However, translating Wikipedia would not be enough to create linguistic diversity. Take the Game of Thrones article on Welsh “Wicipedia”, for instance, which highlights the similarity of the fictional languages in the series to Welsh and emphasises its Welsh actors. This demonstrates the impact of culture on what is important, or not, to the readers of Wikipedia. The relationship between the language and culture is heavily-entangled, and makes it even more important that these are represented and preserved online. 

Watch the opening speeches by Aili Keskitalo, President of the Sámi Parliament of Norway and Guri Melby, Minister of Education Norway at the Arctic Knot 2021

One of the best ways that we can support linguistic diversity is through collaborative efforts with Wikipedia projects. In 2017, The University of Edinburgh and Wikimedia UK started the ‘Celtic Knot’ Wikipedia Language conference, which aims to bring together smaller language communities to collaborate on ideas for how to improve the Wikipedia content in these languages and to increase their linguistic presence across other language Wikipedias. The Celtic Knot also developed into the Arctic Knot conference, hosted by Wikimedia Norway this year, which aims to improve the visibility of indigenous arctic languages. These conferences allow speakers to address the importance of engaging with their language, and provide practical resources for encouraging contributions to Wikipedia. The Toolkit for language activism, for instance, supports the creation of digital skills and written language skills which can help people who speak minority languages to contribute to Wikipedia. Through such projects, people are encouraged to contribute to Wikipedia to improve both representation and usability of languages. 

Using Wikidata to build linguistic diversity online 

From the collaborative efforts of dedicated Wikimedians, communities are already seeing successes in increasing the presence of their languages. But for smaller languages, including many indigenous languages, writing entire Wikipedia articles is challenging and time-consuming. This is where Wikipedia’s sister project – Wikidata – has proven to be an important contributor to improving language diversity online.

This chart, made using Wikidata, shows the amount of Wikipedia articles about Greek citizens that are available on English Wikipedia but not on Greek Wikipedia. The majority are sports players, but it also includes a number of artists and academics.

Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base of machine-readable facts. Each data item has  a unique identifier (a ‘Q’ number). The label, description and all of the statements within each data item can be labelled in any language and, because of this, the data can be instantly transformed into any language. This means that any search can make this knowledge both discoverable and understandable in any language. Items from Wikidata are important for modern technologies such as Amazon’s Alexa and Siri, which use Wikidata’s machine-readable entries to answer questions – but, importantly, these can only provide responses in the languages it is labelled in, and the number of Wikidata language labels, beyond European languages, is scarce.

As an example, take disease and health data, which constitute vital information that needs to be easily-accessible. A search of diseases uploaded to Wikidata reveals over 13,000 diseases have been uploaded to the database, but around 5,000 of these entries are only labelled in 1 language. So whilst Wikidata is a useful tool to aid knowledge discovery, it will take the work of native language speakers from around the world to develop it into the linguistically diverse database that it has the potential to become. In growing both the number of items in Wikidata, and its language labels, technologies can become more accessible for different languages. Ultimately, this is crucial in enabling smaller languages to thrive, rather than just to survive. 

What can we do to promote linguistic diversity?

Governments have highlighted the importance of actively increasing linguistic diversity. UNESCO has produced a 10-year plan for the preservation of indigenous languages, referred to as the Decade of Indigenous Languages, which calls into action the human rights of Indigenous Peoples. A key part of the plan surrounds the use of technology to support access to Indigenous languages – this can involve the use of Wikipedia and Wikidata as impactful open platforms for building global understanding about different languages and, alongside this, different cultures. Encouraging people to contribute to Wikipedia may seem difficult, but events including the Celtic and Arctic Knot conferences, and outreach projects such as Indigenizing Wikipedia, have demonstrated how successfully Wikipedia can be used as a platform for language activism. 

By contributing to both Wikipedia and Wikidata, we can increase the use and representation of smaller languages, contributing to the preservation of the important cultures that are intertwined with them. 

Clea Strathmann, Open Data and Knowledge Equity intern

Watch the whole Arctic Knot conference on YouTube here.

Welsh Wikipedia Thinking Big – Keynote address by Jason Evans at the Celtic Knot

A state of the question – the Catalan language project – Àlex Hinojo, Executive Director, Amical Wikimedia

The Scottish Gaelic Uicipeid project – Susan Ross at the Celtic Knot

Celtic Knot – Panel discussion & closing plenary: The Politics of Language Online

Supporting Open Collections – Guest post by Wikisourceror intern, Erin Boyle

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On July 8, 2021

In Uncategorized

Figure 1: ‘Main Library Rainbow’, Stewart Lamb Cromar 2021 CC BY-SA, File:’Main Library Rainbow’ (2 3) (51239066072).jpg – Wikimedia Commons

I am now at the end of week four of my role as a Wikisourceror – Open Collections intern, and the learning process has continued; albeit now I am a bit more familiar with the world of Wiki! I have now created two new articles on Wikipedia (for Hannah Shields and Iona McGregor), and this week I uploaded some of Stewart Lamb Cromar’s (@stubot) Lego Library images to Wikimedia Commons. You can now find one of the Lego Library pictures on the Wikipedia page for the University of Edinburgh Main Library!

I also had the pleasure to attend the Arctic Knot – Wikipedia Language Conference last week, during which I listened to many incredibly interesting and insightful talks. This included several talks about Arctic languages and indigenous languages, digital language activism, and I participated in an Intro to Wikisource workshop led by Nicolas Vigneron; during which we proofread pages from a book in French Breton – it was a bit of a challenge! However, I am getting the hang of Wikisourcing a little more now.

I have also been playing around with the Wikidata query service; especially looking at interesting queries made by others, such as Martin Poulter. Some queries that I found really interesting were those to return items in particular galleries/libraries/museums, organisations founded by people born in Edinburgh, people who invented scientific instruments, and places of education of Members of Parliament of the United Kingdom. I really enjoyed looking at the several different ways of visualising the results of the query, such as plotting geocoordinates associated with the items on a map or making an interactive graph of connections between the items returned.

Over the past week or two I have been turning my attention to drafting content for the University’s Wikimedia website and corresponding resources (PDFs and videos) and laying the foundations for designing the workflows for library staff. This has involved looking at the website as it is currently and deciding where the content gaps are that need filled.

As I am planning content for the website, I am also investigating good examples of GLAM WikiProjects; especially those which involve working with Wikisource. Examples of best practice and advice will both help inform the resources that I am going to create, and demonstrate to people who are thinking about getting involved in Wikimedia (especially those working in Library & University Collections) that their contributions can have a positive impact; and that in the case of the Library they can use Wikimedia to significantly raise awareness and engagement with their collections both within the University, as well as nationally and globally. Institutions that I am investigating involve the Rijksmuseum, Europeana, Wellcome Library, National Library of Wales, The Smithsonian and more.

Knowledge doesn’t belong in silos. The interlinking of the Wikimedia projects exemplified through Robert Louis Stevenson. Media files on Commons, his written works on Wikisource, machine-readable linked open data on Wikidata. All linked to from Wikipedia.

Whilst planning my content and resources, I needed to think a lot about what the needs and prior knowledge of the users would be. Thinking about potential barriers that people face when contributing content to the Wikimedia projects, many difficulties stem from a lack of accessible, easy-to-use documentation, and users not being aware of how to find resources easily or get started with the various platforms. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be having conversations with some members of staff at the university to find out about their previous experiences with the Wikimedia projects, what their feelings towards them are and how they could be better supported to feel able to contribute.

I am creating resources with a Library focus, meaning that for example, my Wikisource resources will focus more on guiding users on how to upload digitised texts to Wikimedia Commons, add structured data for the texts, and then set up the text for proofreading, validating and transcluding on Wikisource. I will also be creating a guide for making an author page on Wikisource and for showing users how they can link content across the Wikimedia projects: such as adding a template to an author’s Wikipedia page that will show an associated works box, so that users who are interested in an author can quickly and easily access their works.

The goal for this week is to begin creating the content that I have planned in my draft last week. This will involve preparing scripts for how-to videos and beginning to carve out some rough drafts for supporting PDF guides.

Updates to come soon!

Erin Boyle – Wikisourceror Open Collections intern

Open Data and Knowledge Equity – my first week by student intern, Clea Strathmann

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On June 18, 2021

In Uncategorized

Protest against the death penalty for LGBT+ people, Milan 2008. Photo taken by Giovanni Dall’Orto, available at Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY licence. 

Before I started this internship, I was an incredibly busy third-year Psychology student studying at the University of Edinburgh. Now, I’m spending my summer before my final year as an intern for the Information Services Group at the university. During my first week, I’ve had a lot of new information thrown at me about what Wikipedia and its sister project Wikidata are, why these are important, and how to use and edit them. Mostly, though, I’ve been learning a lot about what my internship is all about. 

When I got this role, my title of “Open Data and Knowledge Equity” intern left a lot of questions to be answered. I understood a little about open access information, but very little else. Knowledge equity, it turns out, was a term that would be thrown around a lot, so I really needed to understand what it meant. With a lot of reading around on the subject and a handful of meetings, I managed to develop a pretty good idea of this.

Knowledge equity refers to how knowledge should be fully inclusive. It should be able to be created by anybody, and consumed by anybody. In the world of Wikipedia, though, around 90% of editors are male, and there is substantial racial bias in the content and creation of Wikipedia articles. Considering that Wikipedia is one of the world’s most-viewed websites, it is incredibly important that it is a representative and diverse encyclopedia. The more I read up on the lack of diversity online, as well as in academia and the curriculum, the more I understood how important my role could be in contributing to the visibility of important role models online and on Wikipedia. 

All of this has been incredibly overwhelming – I really didn’t know how much I didn’t know until I started speaking to all of these people, but I’ve managed to get some sort of a grip on it all. With all this information about knowledge equity, open knowledge and Wikipedia, I had to put some of this information to practice, so I created my first ever Wikipedia article.

Thinking about my knowledge equity role, I chose to write a new Wikipedia article on Donna Hitchens, the first elected lesbian superior court judge in the USA. I was surprised to see that she didn’t have her own page already, despite being mentioned in a number of other articles for her work on LGBT+ legal rights. But it turns out that, whilst learning how to create Wiki articles wasn’t as difficult as I had expected, it was quite challenging to find reliable, impartial secondary sources to back up the articles.

It was even more difficult to hear that articles can be nominated for deletion if other Wikipedia editors do not deem the topics or individuals to be a notable based on available citations. This is quite hard-hitting when thinking about diversity and representation online – it’s not enough to just edit Wikipedia articles, and with a lack of reliable sources discussing important topics, there is a substantial scope for notable individuals to remain unseen. This is where my work with the university comes in. 

The university has commitments to equality, diversity and inclusion, and is in a position of privilege in that it contains over 35,000 students capable of writing content that can enable notable figures to be made visible online. Over my internship, I hope to be able to encourage the university to contribute to and engage with Wikipedia as a source of outreach and activism to support diversity in education. 

By the end of my first week, I have definitely started to understand a lot more about knowledge equity and how Wikipedia is influenced by the people who produce and edit content. Over the next few weeks, I’m looking forward to learning and supporting the University of Edinburgh in creating a more diverse online, and physical, environment. 

Woman attending a Black Lives Matter protest holding a sign stating “the UK is not innocent”. Photo Author – Socialist Appeal. Available at 
https://flickr.com/photos/135433887@N02/49977691057 under Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence.
  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

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