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Celtic Knot swag

Celtic Knot Wikipedia Language Conference – “Strength in Unity”

“We are not minority languages, we are minoritised. And we are the global majority” – Tura Arutura, Social Justice activist, creative artist and dancer.

At the end of September, I had the great good fortune to be invited to the Celtic Knot conference in Waterford, Ireland hosted by Wikimedia Ireland and Wikimedia UK. This conference focuses on the minority language Wikipedias (not all of the 345 language Wikipedias are as well supported or well developed as English Wikipedia, see the list of Wikipedias here) and allows a Venn diagram of participants from all kinds of backgrounds, ages and experiences to come together as a community of ‘language activists’ to showcase, discuss and advocate for how best to support minoritised languages around the world.

We held the first ever Celtic Knot conference at the University of Edinburgh back in July 2017 as a way to demonstrate our support for the Scots Gaelic Wikipedia residency at the National Library of Scotland (watch the video presentation here) and to see where we could add some significant value by helping shine a light on some incredibly worthwhile language projects that could do with the space and time to outline the particular challenges (and opportunities) that regional and minority languages face whether technical, socio-economic or political. Initially, the conference focused on bringing the Celtic languages together (Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Manx) to help form a strong bond or ‘Celtic knot’ through working together and sharing experiences but we quickly realised that there was much to be gained from expanding to include Basque, Catalan, Saami, the Romance languages and more. I hosted the first event at the University as a one day experiment with 50-60 attendees to see if there was value to such knowledge and cultural exchange and I was ecstatic to see in Waterford that the need and desire for the conference had not diminished. Indeed, despite the upheaval of the past few years from Brexit, Covid, the Ukraine War, war in the Middle East, the cost of living crisis and more since I last was able to attend the conference in 2018,  the Celtic Knot under the auspices of Wikimedia UK had expanded to a three day event and included more minoritised languages from around the world than ever before including Dagbani, Indonesian, Amazigh and Tashelhit from Morocco and many more who had wanted to attend & present but were unfortunately denied visas owing to some bureaucratic red tape. It is heartening to see that the ‘strength in unity’ between the Celtic language participants and our original conference participants was still there and stronger than ever and that there were welcoming arms extended both by the conference organisers, and importantly, by the Wikimedia Foundation to exploring a larger more inclusive conference to support minoritised languages across the globe. It was also heartening to see attendees from the Wikimedia Research team attend and present on efforts to make the process of creating a new language Wikipedia much easier to move from incubation to graduation in much less than the c. 9-18 years it has historically taken, until now.

It was fitting also that the conference was held in Waterford, Ireland’s oldest city, and a place that was described to me as somewhere that had perhaps lost its way and/or fallen upon hard times in the latter part of the 20th century/early 21st as a rather depressed port area ignored by industry, retail and tourism and needing some love and support. But also now in recent times that its city officials had successfully rebranded and rejuvenated the city through embracing its rich Viking and medieval history and Waterford’s treasures. It also was not lost on me that Scotland-based Irish artist, Aoife Cawley, had created a special linoprint design depicting the marriage of Aoife MacMurrough (c. 1145 – 1188), a Princess of Leinster, being forced (against Irish law and tradition) in marriage to the English lord ‘Strongbow’, earl of Pembroke, in  Christchurch Cathedral in Waterford as part of a pact between Strongbow (also known as Richard fitz Gilbert and Richard de Clare) and the King of Leinster, Dermot MacMurrough (c. 1110 – 1171), to help him reclaim his lands. This marriage on 25 August 1170 marked the first significant arrival of the English people (and the English language) becoming involved in Irish politics, history and culture with all that has ensued since.

Jason Evans, Wikimedian and Open Data Manager at the National Library of Wales on using AI summaries to help write Welsh Wicipedia articles, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew

Jason Evans, Wikimedian and Open Data Manager at the National Library of Wales on using AI summaries to help write Welsh Wicipedia articles, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew

Jason Evans, National Library of Wales Wikimedian and Open Data Manager was the conference’s opening keynote address and expounded on generating Welsh Wicipedia articles using AI generated summaries (checked by two humans for grammar and factual accuracy) to help create more knowledge shared in the Welsh language online. He outlined his work in public outreach at the National Library of Wales, and work with schools and universities in particular where he found translation tasks were exceedingly popular with students – they felt very motivated to share knowledge and address knowledge gaps online. Maristella Gatto further reinforced the motivation of students for translation work in a presentation sharing details on a University of Bari translation project where students chose their words carefully when translating articles about Irish historical events, such as Bloody Sunday, into Italian by using computational analysis of the vocabulary. They implicitly realised AI tools make use of Wikipedia so this can replicate problems in representation of topics if language and vocabulary used in articles was not chosen correctly. Words have meaning and they matter. Representation matters.

“Aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile” translates as “One beetle recognises another”.

This Irish saying (above) is a nod to the notion of comradeship, community and solidarity between people(s). I believe this is certainly true of conference participants who recognised, despite their different languages, that there was true commonality in their shared language activism. Activism that could sometimes lead to becoming political prisoners in the case of Martial Menard, namechecked in the talk by Dr. Tristan Loarer, Opening Sources in the Breton language: Offering the ‘Minoritised’ Language to the Majority”.

We must take what we are entitled to, not hold out our hands.” – Breton activist and political prisoner Martial Menard (1951-2016)

Dr. Tristan Loarer at the Celtic Knot, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew

Dr. Tristan Loarer at the Celtic Knot, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew

Loarer discussed the availability (or lack thereof) of pragmatic tools for the Breton language and the need for feeding the A.I. ‘beast’ with quality assured Breton text whether from Breton transcriptions in Wikisource, the free and open wiki hyper library, or from the creation of the new DEVRI tool, offering free access to a dichroic dictionary of the Breton language.

Two particularly affecting sessions, for me, were on the Irish language. Nóirín Ní Bhraoin, a psychologist from Dublin, noted that when she walked the streets of Dublin she hardly ever heard Gaeilge, which she thought was astounding for the Republic of Ireland’s capital city. She wanted to see if the problem was down to “one Irish speaker not being able to recognise another” so wore a badge that said “Speak Irish to me” and invited shop staff at ten Dublin shops to wear these badges and record how often customers spoke to them in Irish each day. The results showed that on average 3.6 people spoke Gaeilge to the staff each day across the ten stores. This encouraged Nóirín Ní Bhraoin to work with a developer to create a mobile app called “Gaelgoer” (Gael as in Irish Gaeilge speaker and ‘go-er’ as in the English for someone to get up and go!) which would allow app users to view (1) upcoming Irish events happening near them or all around the world (2) businesses that had speakers happy to speak Irish to you, and (3) even geolocate Irish speakers on the map so you could start an online/sms chat with them, if both were happy to do so. NB: an extra ‘Tinder’ style dating function was considered and requested by surveyed Irish speakers but Nóirín Ní Bhraoin and her developer shelved that idea for now.

Nóirín Ní Bhraoin (GaelGoer app), CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew

Nóirín Ní Bhraoin (GaelGoer app), CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew

This project underscores a powerful truth: knowledge belongs to everyone” Joe Kelly, Mayor of Waterford, speaking on the Wiki Women Erasmus+ Project.

The key event of the Conference was the Wiki Women Erasmus+ panel introduced by the Mayor of Waterford, Joe Kelly, who spoke of how genuinely impressed he had been by the initiative and the potential it had for expansion. He was followed by four impressive high school Irish students who took turns to present (both in Irish and with an English translation) on their experiences on the Wiki Women Erasmus project where this EU funded scheme allowed the students to attend the Basque country as part of a cross cultural language exchange with Basque and Friesland students and teachers with the ultimate goal to highlight the gender gap in content online and empower students in minority language communities (Gaeltacht regions, Basque, Friesland) to write Wikipedia articles about underrepresented women in their languages. Another goal of the project has been to produce a ‘teacher’s toolkit’ that could be translated and used in any language to support further work in other regional and minoritised languages.

Mayor of Waterford, Joe Kelly, introducing the Wiki Women Erasmus+ project, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew

Mayor of Waterford, Joe Kelly, introducing the Wiki Women Erasmus+ project, CC-BY-SA by Ewan McAndrew

“While working on this project, we also learned a lot about the history of women from our own country […] by the end we had a wealth of information […] we improved lots of skills during this project” – a student who participated in the Wiki Women Erasmus+ Project

Keynote speaker, and Irish Gaeilge Wikipedia editor, Dr. Kevin Scannell is a leading mind in tech for under-resourced languages and has revolutionised how Gaelic languages interact with modern tech. Scannell outlined some of the very real problems in the use of AI and the difference in distribution of knowledge (and power) between hegemonic languages like English and minoritised languages like Irish. If every word in Irish was committed to paper or computer and fed into a large language model, this would equate to 1 billion words or less. This equates to a knowledgebase 30,000 times smaller than Llama 3.1 LLM. Further, Irish data included in standard LLMs is of low quality with Wikipedias used as standard to train LLMS but minoritised language Wikipedias varying wildly in quality and other sources, such as CommonCrawl, heavily polluted with machine translation. The problem, Scannell asserted, was that big tech companies with non Irish-speaking researchers don’t care about the training data being ‘garbage in’ and thereby don’t care that this produces ‘garbage out’ so Scannell has started an Irish language corpus building project called Fiontar at Dublin City University where the 150 million words in it are being quality assured.

Further talks by Dresden University student researchers, Hannah Yule Heetmann and Joanna Dieckmann, on Unpacking Power Dynamics in Language Policy showed again how words and intentions matter through the analysis they had conducted of the language used in Irish Government’s 20-Year Strategy for the Irish language. Their fascinating findings highlighted how the words “going to” were entirely absent from the policy document, that timescales were almost never included, and that there was also a lack of specific actions and specific labelling of which government or non-government actors were actually to undertake those actions. They concluded with a series of recommendations to combat this for use in future policy documents so that any future Irish language strategy is truly fit for purpose, actionable, accountable and with specific tasks and timescales detailed.

When a language stops having the vocabulary to be able to speak about modern politics, socio-economics and technologies that affect and influence our daily lives then that language ceases to be useful and risks dying out so watching talks showing a range of initiatives, open education resources & toolkits, new ways of thinking about language activism (combining your passions to write about forensic science in Scots Gaelic for instance) and even ensuring that the word for a Wikipedia ‘edit-a-thon’ is now in Irish Gaeilge, gave me great hope that breathing new life into languages is possible and that new safe, open spaces (following the demise of Twitter) can be made to work to support language communities.

This pragmatic and inspiring ‘can do’ spirit, and the strength of feeling behind it coupled with the sheer pride being taken in every speaker’s linguistic heritage and its potential for the future in a global digital world, was the thing that impressed me most during the conference. The recognition that government policies can be advocated for and shaped, and that A.I. and other digital tools and initiatives can be harnessed and made to work to help and massively support languages, cultures, and histories being shared for the betterment of knowledge & cultural exchange and understanding across the world. As Nóirín Ní Bhraoin concluded (and I’m paraphrasing here) it’s about caring, and getting up off your backside to actual do something if you do care about your language, to say “Here we are”.

And if I may add, in a nod to the future of the Celtic Knot, “and here we remain.”

Onwards and upwards… and outwards! And here’s to a bigger, more inclusive Wikipedia language conference next time!

Thanks and Sláinte to Amy and Sophie, our wonderful Wikimedia Ireland hosts, and conference co-organisers, Lea, Richard and Daria, from Wikimedia UK. Thanks also to Tura for a wonderful display of traditional Irish dance. 

Ardvreck Castle, near Lairg, on a misty day in July 2024

Scotland loves Monuments 2024

Get involved in Wiki Loves Monuments!

Glasgow City Chambers stairwell, by Stinglehammer CC-BY-SA 4.0 and past Wiki Loves Monuments upload stats

Wiki Loves Monuments is an international photo competition which takes part throughout the month of September every year, and is supported by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation.

You can see historic locations near you that are missing an image using our handy interactive map (red pins are locations without an open image).

The aim is to crowdsource as many high quality, openly licensed photos as possible of scheduled monuments and listed buildings throughout the world. Why? Because documenting our cultural heritage today is so important.

In the UK, there will be prizes for the best photos of a site in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well as prizes for the best UK photos overall. The latter will then be put forward for international prizes and there are some phenomenal pics from last year’s competition worldwide like this one of St Andrew’s Church (1747 — 1762) at dawn, Kyiv, Ukraine by Maksym Popelnyukh:

St Andrew's Church (1747 — 1762) at dawn, Kyiv, Ukraine by Maksym Popelnyukh
St Andrew’s Church (1747 — 1762) at dawn, Kyiv, Ukraine by Maksym Popelnyukh

Why take part?

Portobello and Wikipedia – Great 8 min podcast featuring University of Edinburgh Digital Curator Gavin Willshaw and Dr Margaret Munro of the Portobello Heritage Society discussing the importance of surfacing local heritage online.

Wikimedia Commons is a free repository of photographs, audio and video content that anyone can use, re-use or distribute. Images on Commons can also be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles – which can then be seen by a global audience.  But not all of our rich heritage is represented – there are a number of gaps when it comes to the coverage of Scotland – and this year, we’d like to do what we can to change that. Especially when this is something fun and impactful we can all do.

Is your organisation or group looking for activities?  Wiki Loves Monuments can be a great activity for local social or volunteer groups, not just those those concerned with photography or history.  Why not organise a heritage walk to take pictures of listed buildings in the local area, and visit the local museum or library at the same time?

Collage of Wiki Loves Monuments pics by Stinglehammer, CC-BY-SA 4.0, taken during Glasgow Doors Open Day.

How do you take part?

Register for an account on Wikimedia Commons. (Individuals only, no organisational accounts.) NB: If you already have a Wikipedia account, no need to register for a new account on Wikimedia Commons, you can use the same account for Wikimedia Commons. To enter the competition you must make sure that your account has a valid email address and that your email is activated.

To check that, once you have logged in, look for “My preferences” tab at the top right of the page. Click on it, and then select “enable email from other users.”  This will allow the competition organisers and other registered users on Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons to contact you but will not make your email address publicly available.

Here’s a short 2 min video explainer by Classics student, Hannah Rothmann – you can use this new tool to view places to photo near you.

What should you photograph? How do you upload it?

In Scotland, the subjects eligible to be entered in Wiki Loves Monuments are those designated by Historic Environment Scotland references for Listed Buildings and Scheduled Monuments. If you’re not sure what buildings or monuments are classed as listed, don’t worry! We’ve got a great tool for you to use to upload your photos which includes an interactive map.

Green pins on the map indicate monuments which already have a photo on Wikimedia Commons, whereas red pins indicate where they are missing. Select your town or city then wander around your local area and look for buildings or monuments with red pins. You can take photos on smartphones, tablets or cameras and then upload them by selecting the appropriate pin on the map and clicking upload. Make sure that you are logged into your Wikimedia Commons account and follow the basic instructions. Every photo uploaded via the interactive map will be entered into the Wiki Loves Monuments.

You can take more than one photo of a building or monument. Preferably one should be a photo of the building or monument as a whole, but also use your photographic flair to add photos of key features, inside views or behind the scenes features that the public doesn’t normally get to see. Doors Open Day runs throughout September and is a great opportunity to organise a photography tour of a building or a tour of the local listed monuments in your town.

I’ve had the pleasure of visiting and snapping pictures of the Glasgow City Chambers, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Anchor Line bar, Garnethill Synagogue and the Arlington Baths among many other locations as part of Glasgow Doors Open Days.

Other tips:

  • Not sure that your photo skills are up to the competition? Don’t worry about it, the important thing is to take part. The more photos we can crowdsource, the more we can improve the coverage of listed buildings and monuments in Scotland, which is our ultimate goal. You can also check the Wiki Loves Monuments blog for tips on how to best take architectural photos.
  • Wiki Loves Monuments is aimed at everyone! You don’t have to be an expert photographer, or have prior experience with any of the Wikimedia projects.
  • The competition runs through the whole of September from the 1st till the 30th and any entries uploaded during that time will be part of the competition. Photos don’t have to have been taken during September though, so you can add old photos, as long as they’ve not been previously uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Doors Open Day is a great opportunity to tie in with Wiki Loves Monuments, so if you know local DOD venues or if you work with a local heritage officer, please advertise it with them too.

How can you take part?

National Museum of Brazil, by Paulo R C M Jr. [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons

Scotland was voted the most beautiful country in the world in a Rough Guide readers’ poll.

There’s nowhere quite like it.

Yet, we can take it for granted that our beautiful locations, listed buildings and monuments will always be there… something that can never be fully guaranteed. Political and economic tides change  and forces of nature can have devastating effects as we have seen with the destruction of Palmyra in Syria, the devastation in Ukraine, the fires at the National Museum of Brazil, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and, more closer to home, the Mackintosh building fire at the Glasgow School of Art, Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterwork.

There is a grief that comes from these lost buildings, their histories and what they had come to represent & symbolise. Recognising that there can be a profound regret and sadness at the cultural losses and a significant connection with the past means we can act today to look around us and appreciate the cultural heritage all around us. Many of us have access to a camera or camera phone and may even walk past these buildings every day. All it takes is looking up, taking a snap and uploading it in seconds and you’ve done something amazing to help document our cultural heritage for all time.

That’s why it’s so important that we take the opportunity to document our cultural heritage now for future generations before it is too late. Share your high quality pics of listed buildings and monuments to Wikimedia Commons and help preserve our cultural heritage online. After days out, weekend breaks and holidays at home & abroad, there will be gigabytes of pics taken in recent months and years. These could remain on your memory card or be shared to Commons and help illustrate Wikipedia for the benefit of all.

Aside from being great fun, Wiki Loves Monuments is a way of capturing a snapshot of our nation’s cultural heritage for future generations and documenting our country’s most important historic sites. Don’t wait till it’s too late, do your bit today! Click here to view a map of your local area to get started.

You just take a quick look at the map, take a pic and upload. It takes seconds and is the easiest way to take part in this year’s competition.

If each one of us took just 1 pic, we’d have this sewn up in a few short weeks. Which is when Wiki Loves Monuments closes – end of 30 September 2024. But if you can do more then great.

#ScotWiki #WikiLovesMonuments

ps. If nothing else, let’s give our counterparts in Ireland, England and Wales a run for their money in terms of how many images we can upload. A little friendly rivalry never hurts, right?

Let’s smash it again this September! Let’s see if we can get pics from ALL over Scotland this year. Everyone is welcome to take part and every picture helps.

You can check out the images uploaded so far for Wiki Loves Monuments in Scotland here.

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.

Reading up about… Wikipedia

The Solace of Oblivion

  • Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker, 29 September 2014.
  • Really interesting article. Toobin addresses a decision by the European Court of Justice that prohibits Google from linking to certain stories and highlights the distressing Catsouras case as a worthy discussion point: “There is an inevitable conflict between two distinct social values”–privacy and free speech… The question is how do societies value those competing rights. Technology didn’t create the tension but just revealed it in a dramatic way.”

Wikipedia warns against French attempt to extend EU privacy law globally

  • Reuters.com, 10 June 2016.
  • Short article warning about technology being censored by judicial restrictions in certain countries.

Jeffrey Toobin Suspended From New Yorker

  • Reuters.com, 19 October 2020.
  • Interesting follow-up on the author of the 1st article and how he may now wish for this alleged incident to be removed from web search results.

Google And The Right To Be Forgotten

  • Julian Vigo, Forbes.com, 3 October 2019.
  • Short article following the story about Google delisting web results.
  • “Breyer went on to say that supporting Google’s right to break privacy laws outside the EU would “fracture the internet and raise more borders online.” Obviously, where information is available elsewhere, one need not travel to access it. When I am blocked because of GDPR rules in reading an online American publication, I simply change my VPN location to the US and I have immediate access. Hence, the notion of geography determining access and privacy right, given current technology of VPN for starters, makes a mockery out of legal data protections. “

Is Wikipedia a good source? 2 college librarians explain when to use the online encyclopedia – and when to avoid it

  • The Conversation.com, 20 March 2023.
  • Really good and concise opening introduction to Wikipedia and some perceived pros and cons.

Wikipedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher

  • The Economist, 9 January 2021.
  • Two years old article (Wikipedia is 22.5 years old now) but excellent summary of where we are with Wikipedia 20 years on and you can also listen to this story in an engaging audio in 14 minutes.
  • A former president of the American Library Association in 2007: “A professor who encourages the use of Wikipedia is the intellectual equivalent of a dietician who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything,” he sneered.
  • “Toby Negrin, chief product officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, the San Francisco-based charity that provides the site’s infrastructure, describes the online encyclopedia as a “guardian of truth”. That sounds grandiose. But other tech behemoths now use it as a neutral arbiter.”

How Wikipedia gets to define what’s true online

  • Ethan Zuckerman, Prospect magazine, 3 March 2022
  • “Who gets to define what’s true online?… In practical terms, truth is what Google’s knowledge graph—the massive database of facts that allows the powerful search engine to answer most questions—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.”
  • “Somehow, verifiability and neutral point of view work together to gradually produce articles that reflect consensus reality. Nonsense, argues Ford. The formation of truth on Wikipedia is as political as it is anywhere else in the world. Her book centres on the creation of a single Wikipedia article about the Tahrir Square protests that ultimately ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 2011. By following the editing of this single article, Ford documents the tension between activists who want to recognise and celebrate history in the making and those who argue that “Wikipedia is not a crystal ball” and should be slow and cautious in writing history.”

  • “Wikipedia is a roadmap for co-operation and collaboration at scale. As we mourn the apparent impossibility of keeping YouTube free of flat Earthers or Facebook free from vaccine disinformation, the fact that Wikipedia remains an anchor for consensus reality seems worthy of close study. “

Students are told not to use Wikipedia but it’s a trustworthy source

  • Rachel Cunneen and Mathieu O’Neil of University of Canberra, The Conversation.com, 4 November 2021.
  • “For popular articles, Wikipedia’s online community of volunteers, administrators and bots ensure edits are based on reliable citations. Popular articles are reviewed thousands of times. Some media experts, such as Amy Bruckman, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s computing centre, argue that because of this painstaking process, a highly-edited article on Wikipedia might be the most reliable source of information ever created.”
  • “Wikipedia can be a tool for better media literacy. Research suggests Australian children are not getting sufficient instruction in spotting fake news…. Our students clearly need more media literacy education, and Wikipedia can be a good media literacy instrument. One way is to use it is with “lateral reading”. This means when faced with an unfamiliar online claim, students should leave the web page they’re on and open a new browser tab. They can then investigate what trusted sources say about the claim.”

How many Wikipedia references are available to read? 

  • The Wikimedia Foundation, Medium.com, 20 August 2018.
  • 6 minute read. The article discusses measuring the proportion of open access sources across languages and topics.
  • Less than half of the official versions of scholarly publications cited with an identifier in Wikipedia are freely available on the web: 29% are free-to-read at the source, while an additional 10% have a free-to-read version available elsewhere.

Wikipedia is open to all, the research underpinning it should be too.

  • Tattersall Andy, LSE Blogs, 21 February 2022.
  • Our sample indicated that around half of all academic citations on the platform are paywalled. This is a major flaw in the Wikipedia model. Openly available published research helps support the development of Wikipedia. This in turn assists Wikipedia’s ultimate goal of access to transparent and evidence-based knowledge. It would also lower barriers to access research, which ultimately is good for academics and society.

    We appreciate that not everything is open for the rest of society and it might be some time before that happens. But, given Wikipedia’s global influence and stated mission, the research that underpins each entry should be as open and accessible as possible. To take full advantage of this it requires a greater understanding amongst academics and Wikipedians as to the importance of citing open access works over those behind a paywall.

‘Disrupting the Publisher-Academic Complex’

  • a talk by scientist Peter Murray-Rust at the British Library on 21 April 2018 (45 min video) about the ‘dystopia’ of the current scholarly publishing model.
  • Disruption does not mean illegality – it can be new technology, new philosophies, new people. We need a “Knowledge Spring” to break free of licences and all the other restrictive rubbish. Today’s publishers are like Bradbury’s firemen (Fahrenheit 451) – their role is to prevent reading.”
    Peter Murray-Rust, University of Cambridge and ContentMine Ltd.

Closing the Gender Gap

  • Wikimedia UK, 30 December 2019 (19 minute video).
  • Wikimedia UK is the national chapter for the global Wikimedia movement which supports Wikipedia and its sister sites. This video showcases the work of Wikimedia UK and the community of Wikimedians in the UK as they try to address gender bias and a lack of content on Wikipedia about women.

Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence From a Randomized Control Trial. 

  • Research paper about how Wikipedia actively influences science development, providing evidence of causality, instead of the usual correlation. (Video presentation summarising the paper)
  • “As the largest encyclopedia in the world, it is not surprising that Wikipedia reflects the state of scientific knowledge. However, Wikipedia is also one of the most accessed websites in the world, including by scientists, which suggests that it also has the potential to shape science. This paper shows that it does.”

‘Anyone can edit’, not everyone does: Wikipedia’s infrastructure and the gender gap

  • Heather Ford, Judy Wajcman, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 47, No. 4 (August 2017), pp. 511-527 (17 pages)
  • Less than ten percent of Wikipedia editors are women. At one level, this imbalance in contributions and therefore content is yet another case of the masculine culture of technoscience. This is an important argument and, in this article, we examine the empirical research that highlights these issues. Our main objective, however, is to extend current accounts by demonstrating that Wikipedia’s infrastructure introduces new and less visible sources of gender disparity. In sum, our aim here is to present a consolidated analysis of the gendering of Wikipedia.”

Wikipedia Co-Founder Jimmy Wales On The Future Of The Internet, Bitcoin, Web3, Cryptocurrencies And Encryption

  • Roger Huang, Forbes.com, 16 December 2022.
  • Fairly interesting wide-ranging chat with Jimmy Wales about all of the above.

Wikipedia on Olive Schreiner, like it or what?

  • Professor Liz Stanley, University of Edinburgh, Whites Writing Whiteness: Letters, Domestic Figurations & Representations of Whiteness in South Africa 1770s-1970s, 18 July 2019.
  • UoE Professor Liz Stanley grapples with what ‘expert’ academics role should be when it comes to ‘non-expert’ Wikipedia editors (potentially) getting things very wrong in such commonly visited web pages on their specialist subject. Asks some interesting questions.
  • “Do these ‘hidden’ editors know about the topics under consideration, do they have a good grasp of what the current state of knowledge about something is, and do they understand how to evaluate the quality of different positions, ideas and claims? The bottom line is, are these editors able to detect serious issues in what an entry represents as knowledge?”

“I Was Devastated”: Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets

  • Katrina Brooker, Vanity Fair.com, 1 July 2018.
  • “Initially, Berners-Lee’s innovation was intended to help scientists share data across a then obscure platform called the Internet, a version of which the U.S. government had been using since the 1960s. But owing to his decision to release the source code for free—to make the Web an open and democratic platform for all—his brainchild quickly took on a life of its own.”
  • “He fully recognizes that re-decentralizing the Web is going to be a lot harder than inventing it was in the first place. “When the Web was created, there was nobody there, no vested parties who would resist,” says Brad Burnham… has started investing in companies aiming to decentralize the Web. “There are entrenched and very wealthy interests who benefit from keeping the balance of control in their favor.” Billions of dollars are at stake here: Amazon, Google, and Facebook won’t give up their profits without a fight.”

The Jimmy Wales interview

  • Ann-Marie Corvin, Techinformed.com, 23 February 2023.
  • At OpenUK’s inaugural State of Open Conference, Wikipedia’s founder talks ChatGPT, the Online Safety Bill and the site’s ongoing diversity imbalance.
  • Wales “acknowledges that the UK government’s troubled-but-well-meaning bill – which has passed through the hands of four prime ministers in as many years – is trying to hold big tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter to account. The entrepreneur himself has been the subject of vile slander and abuse on Twitter, but he argues that the Online Safety Bill in its current form is harmful to the open internet and that the government’s “simplistic, top down approach” ignores the way that the wider web works.”

Wikipedia’s Plan to Resist Election Day Misinformation

  • The Wired.com, 26 October 2020. May be paywalled.
  • The encyclopedia is determined to emerge from the insanity of a pandemic and a polarizing Biden v Trump election with its information and reputation intact.

‘What Counts as Information: The Construction of Reliability and Verifiability’

  • Z.J. McDowell, and M.A. Vetter,  (2021). Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality (1st ed.). Routledge. [Download and read Chapter 2]
  • In essence, the encyclopedia decides “what counts” as knowledge as it evaluates, processes, and consequently validates information… In many ways, reliability in Wikipedia is a double-edged sword, as it is accompanied by both advantages and disadvantages. Verifiability, for example, helps to validate information and promote accuracy and trust in the encyclopedia. At the same time, the focus on print or written secondary sources, to the exclusion of other types of knowledge, limits Wikipedia’s ability to fully become reliable in terms of coverage of marginalized topics, or topics which have been developed through knowledge-making practices beyond print. These lessons are important for the general public that consumes and uses the encyclopedia, as well as for anyone that identifies as a newcomer to Wikipedia. Understanding even a small piece of how information becomes knowledge in Wikipedia can increase information literacy skills across other digital platforms.”

Should you believe Wikipedia? : online communities and the construction of knowledge.

  • A. Bruckman (2022).  Cambridge University Press. Read pages 64-90 [Chapter 3]
  • What does it mean for something to be “true”? How is the internet changing how we understand truth? This chapter explores how theories of the nature of truth and knowledge can help us to understand the internet.

Students’ use of Wikipedia as an academic resource – Patterns of use and perceptions of usefulness.

  • N. Selwyn & S. Gorard (2016). The Internet and Higher Education v.28 pp 28-34
  • Survey data examining 1658 undergraduate students’ uses of digital technologies for academic purposes found 87.5% of students report using Wikipedia for their academic work, with 24.0% of these considering it ‘very useful’.

  • Use and perceived usefulness of Wikipedia differs by students’ gender; year of study; cultural background and subject studied.

  • Wikipedia mainly plays an introductory and/or clarificatory role in students information gathering and research.

“You get what you need”: A study of students’ attitudes towards using Wikipedia when doing school assignments.

  • M. Blikstad-Balas (2016). Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 60(6) pages 594-608.
  • A discrepancy between students’ positive attitudes to including Wikipedia in their school-related literacy practices and their teachers’ lack of approval of this knowledge source is discussed.

Changing the Way Stories Are Told: Engaging staff and students in improving Wikipedia content about women in Scotland.

  • E. McAndrew in Wikipedia and Academic Libraries: A Global Project (2021).
  • Overview of the how & why of five years’ work at the University of Edinburgh targeting improved diversity of content and editors contributing to Wikipedia inc. Scottish suffragettes, Scottish witches and the Edinburgh Seven, the first female undergraduates to study at any UK university.

The Gender Divide in Wikipedia: Quantifying and Assessing the Impact of Two Feminist Interventions

  • I. Langrock & S. González-Bailón, Journal of communication (2022).

Wikipedia is the last bastion of idealism on the internet

  • Barbara Speed, Prospectmagazine.co.uk, 22 January 2021.

Academia and Wikipedia

  • Professor Danah Boyd, Corante.com, January 4 2005.
  • Very early dissection of the tensions between academia and Wikipedia from way back in 2005.

Wikipedia, academia and Seigenthaler

  • Professor Danah Boyd, Corante.com, 17 December 2005.
  • Seigenthaler’s concern that “irresponsible vandals [can] write anything they want about anybody.” Much to my complete and utter joy, Jimmy Wales responded with a fantastic structural comparison that i felt should be surfaced and shared to the world at large about comparing Wikipedia as a steak restaurant. Worth a quick read.

Wikipedia: The Most Reliable Source on the Internet?

  • S.C. Stuart, UK PCmag.com, 3 June 2021.
  • Professor Amy Bruckman states the answer to “should you believe Wikipedia?” isn’t simple. In [her] book she argues “that the content of a popular Wikipedia page is actually the most reliable form of information ever created. Think about it—a peer-reviewed journal article is reviewed by three experts (who may or may not actually check every detail), and then is set in stone. The contents of a popular Wikipedia page might be reviewed by thousands of people. If something changes, it is updated. Those people have varying levels of expertise, but if they support their work with reliable citations, the results are solid. On the other hand, a less popular Wikipedia page might not be reliable at all.”

Wikipedia, research and representation

  • Amy Burge, 404 error.
  • Was a lovely article written by a medieval historian and member of staff here at the University of Edinburgh BUT doesn’t seem to exist anymore. It’s just gone. An internet full of memory holes 🙁

Mary Susan McIntosh and the Women in Red

  • Lorna Campbell, Lornamcampbell.org, 11 May 2017.
  • Our Lorna Campbell writes a short post for International Women’s Day about the impact you can have from writing a page that does not yet exist and then publishing it and nominating it for mention on Wikipedia’s front page as a ‘Did You Know’ fact.

What do you do with a dead chemist

  • Anne-Marie Scott, Ammienoot.com, 11 May 2017.
  • Our Anne-Marie Scott reflects on how sometimes when we talk about Wikipedia with colleagues they can quickly get as passionate and engaged as we are. That happened when Ewan went to visit our colleague in Chemistry, Dr Michael Seery and Michael got very upset that 19 brilliant women chemists has been refused Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry and had to petition them in 1904.
  • Reader: all 19 have a page on Wikipedia now.
  • Well, 18. One got deleted. So we need to write that page again so it remains this time!

Wikipedia and Student Writing

  • Andrew Stuhl, Wiki Edu blog, 14 October 2014
  • Almost 10 years ago but it reflects on what students get from contributing to Wikipedia.
  • “Students said that simply knowing that an audience of editors existed was enough to change how they wrote. They chose words more carefully. They double-checked their work for accuracy and reliability. And they began to think about how best they could communicate their scholarship to readers who were as curious, conscientious, and committed and as they were.”

Vandalism on Collaborative Web Communities: An Exploration of Editorial Behaviour in Wikipedia

  •  A. Alkharashi and J. Jose in: 5th Spanish Conference on Information Retrieval (CERI ’18), Zaragoza, Spain, 26-27 Jun 2018.
  • University of Glasgow researchers preliminary analysis in 2018 revealed that ~ 90% of the vandalism or foul edits done on Wikipedia were by unregistered users due to nature of openness.
  • The community reaction seemed to be immediate: most vandalisms were reverted within five minutes on an average.
  • Further analysis shed light on the tolerance of Wikipedia community, reliability of anonymous users revisions and feasibility of early prediction of vandalism.

‘Shiver-inducing contacts with the past’

  • Martin Poulter, CILIP Update, November 2015.
  • Bodleian Wikimedian Martin Poulter says that the digital world can
    play a crucial role in sharing those shiver-inducing moments of contact
    with the past, such as seeing Charles Darwin’s actual handwriting,
    and libraries can involve more people in that authentic experience.

Covid-19 is one of Wikipedia’s biggest challenges ever. Here’s how the site is handling it.

  • Travis M. Andrews, The Washington Post, 7 August 2020.
  • More than 67,000 editors had collaborated to create more than 5,000 Wikipedia articles in 175 different languages about covid-19 and its various impacts.
  • Jevin West, a professor in the Information School at the University of Washington, said not to worry, that the Wikipedia has handled the virus “overall, exceptionally well. It’s not only what people go to and read,” West said. “It’s what feeds a lot of the major search engines, too. So it sort of has double impact. As someone who studies misinformation and disinformation, it’s kind of a ray of hope in a sea of pollution,” West added. “It’s almost like people’s passion to get things right and to be these curators of human knowledge makes them even more careful.” He also cited Wikipedia’s transparency. Certain discredited sources aren’t allowed, and the entire website’s edit history is readily available to the user. Finally, every fact is plainly sourced. “That level of transparency provides trust,” he said.

Majority of Wikipedia editors are still men – so how is the online encyclopedia addressing the issue?

  • The Evening Standard, 8 March 2023. Recent article.
  • The proportion of so-called “Wikipedians” who identify as women is now around 15 per cent. Almost 20 per cent of biography articles on English-language Wikipedia are about women. That compares to around 15.5 per cent in 2014. The most recent data from 2020 shows that newcomers to Wikipedia editing are more likely to be women.
  • “If society were to write more – historically and presently and in the future – about women, if journalists wrote as many paragraphs about a woman as is written about a man, there’d be more information that editors could put into Wikipedia articles. You know, we don’t come up with anything out of thin air.”

The Wikipedia rule that makes it harder to create entries about lesser-known but important women from history.

  • Stephen Harrison, Slate.com, March 2019.
  • Gender bias on Wikipedia received media attention in 2018 when Donna Strickland won a Nobel Prize in physics and, at the time of her award, did not have a Wikipedia page. The problem wasn’t lack of trying: Before the award, a Wikipedia contributor attempted to create a page for Strickland, but a separate editor declined the article because Strickland had not yet received significant coverage in reliable publications like major newspapers. In retrospect, this seems like a bad ruling. Even before she won the Nobel Prize, Strickland was widely considered a leader in her field.

Who Updates Celebrity Deaths on Wikipedia?

  • Stephen Harrison, Slate.com, 16 August 2018.
  • Meet the editors who race to be the first to declare a famous person dead.

Travel down a Wikipedia rabbit hole with the mastermind behind DepthsOfWikipedia Instagram

  • Elena Cavender, Mashable.com, 24 October 2021.

The Depths of Wikipedia creator on finding the goofy corners of the web

  • Kristina Bravo, Mozilla.org., 10 March 2023.

Monitoring changes in Wikipedia pageviews could help save wildlife

  • Researchers have developed a new tool called the Species Awareness Index (SAI), which can track the real-time rate of change in online biodiversity awareness. The index looks at the monthly change in average daily page views for around 40,000 species (under reptiles, ray-finned fishes, mammals, birds, insects, and amphibians) across 10 of the most popular Wikipedia languages.
  • ‘Being able to see in real-time how a population’s interest in biodiversity is changing can help organisations make conservation management decisions on the basis of those changes.’ says Joseph. ‘But if, for example, you see in real-time that there is a growing interest for bumblebees, perhaps driven by a viral video, conservation charities could then make a deliberate effort to increase advertising to help protect that species.’

Russian court fines Wikipedia again for article about war in Ukraine

  • Reuters.com, 27 April 2023.
  • Wikipedia is one of the few surviving independent sources of information in Russian since a state crackdown on online content intensified after Moscow invaded Ukraine last year.

Russian court fines Wikipedia for seventh time over Ukraine invasion article

  • Kurt Robson, Verdict.com, 27 April 2023.x
  • Wikimedia’s fines now sit at a whopping Rbs8.4m ($103,000).Leighanna Mixter, Wikimedia’s senior legal manager, previously said: “These orders are part of an ongoing effort by the Russian government to limit the spread of reliable, well-sourced information in the country.”

How Wikipedia became too powerful

  • The Telegraph, 28 April 2023. May be paywalled.

The Hunt for Wikipedia’s disinformation moles

  • Wired.com, 17 October 2022. May be paywalled.
  • AS SOCIAL PLATFORMS such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have struggled with the onslaught of fake news, disinformation, and bots, Wikipedia has transformed itself into a source of trusted information—not just for its readers but also for other tech platforms. The challenge now is to keep it that way.

2022 wasn’t the year of Cleopatra – so why was she the most viewed page on Wikipedia?

  • Taha Yasseri, The Conversation, 12 January 2023.
  • Researcher Taha Yasseri gathers statistics on the most viewed Wikipedia articles of the year.
  • Most articles at the top of the 2022 list are related to major world events, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the death of the Queen and the men’s football World Cup. Elon Musk and Johnny Depp also made the list. In addition to perennial favourites such as the Bible and YouTube, there are a couple of surprises that were probably influenced by external factors like media and popular culture. For example, the article about Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious US serial killer who died in 1994, had more than 54 million views, coming in at number two.
  • However, the massive interest in the article about Cleopatra remains a mystery…. the Google Assistant app, which uses voice recognition to allow users to interact with their phones through conversation, may be responsible. One of the prompts the app provides to demonstrate its capabilities is “Try saying: Show Cleopatra on Wikipedia”.
  • The Cleopatra example highlights the impact that seemingly small decisions by designers can have on directing collective attention to certain topics and issues, sometimes with more serious consequences. Google has been criticised for ranking search results in a way that prioritises its own products.

Friday essay: shaping history – why I spent ten years studying one Wikipedia article

  • Heather Ford, The Conversation, 24 November 2022.
  • It has been over a decade since Ford started studying this single article on English Wikipedia about the 2011 Egyptian revolution. At the time of writing, it runs to almost 13,000 words and more than 400 citations.
  • Rather than rational negotiation and broad consensus, I learned that Wikipedia articles about historic events are often the result of passionate struggle over representing what happened to whom and its consequences… Wikipedians shaped the representation of the event not by inserting falsities but rather by framing and selecting facts that supported certain narratives rather than others.

UK readers may lose access to Wikipedia amid online safety bill requirements

  • Dan Milmo, The Guardian, 28 April 2023.
  • Lucy Crompton-Reid, the chief executive of Wikimedia UK, warned the popular site could be blocked because it will not carry out age verification if required to do so by the bill. Crompton-Reid told the BBC it was “definitely possible that one of the most visited websites in the world – and a vital source of freely accessible knowledge and information for millions of people – won’t be accessible to UK readers (let alone UK-based contributors)”.

AI Is Tearing Wikipedia Apart

  • Claire Woodcock, Vice.com, 2 May 2023.
  • Volunteers who maintain the digital encyclopedia are divided on how to deal with the rise of AI-generated content and misinformation.
  • “Like people who socially construct knowledge”, Professor Amy Bruckman says, “large language models are only as good as their ability to discern fact from fiction.”
  • The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind the website, is looking into building tools to make it easier for volunteers to identify bot-generated content. Meanwhile, Wikipedia is working to draft a policy that lays out the limits to how volunteers can use large language models to create content.

How Wikipedia can shape the future of AI

  • Alek Tarkowski, OpenFuture.eu blog, 4 May 2023
  • Creative Commons has been exploring how copyright law and tools apply to the generative AI space. Additionally, Mozilla has recently announced the launch of Mozilla.ai And Wikipedia is already deeply embedded in the emergent AI systems, as a key component of many of the AI training datasets. 
  • Wikipedia is radically setting itself up for its own replacement by generative AI. Especially if the very models trained on Wikipedia begin to create content for the encyclopedia — quickly pushing human editors out of the loop. However, this situation can also be seen as an opportunity.

Wikipedia’s value in the age of generative AI

  • Selena Deckelmann, Chief Product and Technology Officer of the Wikimedia Foundatrion, 13 July 2023.
  • “In an internet flooded with machine generated content, this means that Wikipedia becomes even more valuable.”

Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Wikipedia’s Gender Problem

  • Tom Simonite, Wired.com, 3rd August 2018.
  • A software program from Primer scours news articles and scientific journals for female scientists who don’t have entries in the online encyclopedia.

Should ChatGPT Be Used to Write Wikipedia Articles?

  • Stephen Harrison, Slate.com, 12 January 2023.
  • Wikipedians like Knipel imagine that ChatGPT could be used on Wikipedia as a tool without removing the role of humanity. For them, the initial text that’s generated from the chatbot is useful as a starting place or a skeletal outline. Then, the human verifies that this information is supported by reliable sources and fleshes it out with improvements. This way, Wikipedia itself does not become machine-written. Humans remain the project’s special sauce.
  • Andrew Lih, the Wikimedian-at-large at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and a volunteer Wikipedia editor since 2003, agreed that much of the potential for ChatGPT lies in overcoming that initial inertia and finding the “activation energy” to write a new article for the encyclopedia. “Wikipedians are not lacking for motivation or passion, but just the time,” he said.
  • “We always have imperfect information, and then we correct it,” he said. “If the issue is the original sin of using A.I., well, I don’t believe in original sin.” Perhaps that’s not a bad way to conceptualize this issue overall. Because generative A.I. is here to stay, it makes sense to adopt best practices and to stress the need for human supervision—not ban it from the outset as the fruit of the poisonous tree

Will Wikipedia be written by AI? Founder Jimmy Wales is thinking about it

  • Simon Hunt, The Evening Standard, 30 March 2023.
  • “The discussion in the Wikipedia community that I’ve seen so far is…people are cautious in the sense that we’re aware that the existing models are not good enough but also intrigued because there seems like there’s a lot of possibility here,” Wales said.“I think we’re still a way away from: ‘ChatGPT, please write a Wikipedia entry about the empire state building’, but I don’t know how far away we are from that, certainly closer than I would have thought two years ago,” he said..
  • “One of the issues with the existing ChatGPT is what they call in the field ‘hallucinating’ — I call it lying,” he said. “It has a tendency to just make stuff up out of thin air which is just really bad for Wikipedia — that’s just not OK. We’ve got to be really careful about that.”

And some (lying) advice from ChatGPT itself:

There are several recent articles about Wikipedia that could make for an interesting book group discussion. Here are a few options to consider:

“The Co-Founder of Wikipedia Has a Plan to Fix the Internet” by Andrew Marantz in The New Yorker (published on April 12, 2021). This article explores the vision of Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s co-founders, for a new decentralized internet that would be less susceptible to manipulation by corporations and governments.

“Wikipedia’s Plan to Resist Election Day Misinformation” by Amanda Hess in The New York Times (published on October 29, 2020). This article examines Wikipedia’s efforts to combat misinformation and disinformation during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, including the use of “edit-a-thons” to improve coverage of election-related topics on the site.

“The Uneasy Future of Wikipedia” by Tom Simonite in Wired (published on November 15, 2021). This article explores the challenges that Wikipedia faces as it seeks to maintain its status as a reliable source of information in an era of “fake news” and increasing skepticism towards traditional media.

“What Does Wikipedia Mean Now?” by Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker (published on February 17, 2020). This article reflects on the role that Wikipedia plays in shaping our collective understanding of the world, and considers the site’s limitations and biases.

Each of these articles offers a different perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of Wikipedia, and could spark a lively discussion about the site’s impact on the way we access and consume information online.

Reader: these sources do not exist.

Recovering Histories – Improving Equality and Diversity Online

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.

Final reflections on my Wikimedia Training Internship by Hannah Rothmann

Before starting my internship as the Wikimedia Training Intern at the University of Edinburgh, I did not know much about Wikipedia and its sister projects. I had obviously used Wikipedia; to settle arguments, as a springboard for research and as a helping hand in some particularly difficult pub quizzes. However, I had not given much thought to where that information came from, how it was curated, maintained and what prompted people to edit freely and in their spare time. The goal to make Wikipedia the ‘sum of all human knowledge’ lies behind the work of many editors. It is this possibility of open access to all knowledge for all that drives people. The majority of editors want to preserve information, such as creating an online database of small, nearly extinct languages. For many, it is also a wish to share knowledge, to help people and to make the internet a bit better that drives them to contribute. It is a noble aim and one that many strive to help achieve both within the University of Edinburgh and Wikimedia UK, the UK branch of the Wikimedia Foundation.

However, I do acknowledge that Wikipedia and the other Wiki platforms are not perfect. They sadly reflect the biases that are inherent in our society. Only around 18% of all biographies on the English Wikipedia are on women and there are even less on women from the Global South. The representation of ethnic minorities is also problematic. A study in 2011 found that the perspective on Wikipedia tends to come from the Global North and this is something that needs to change as the editors of Wikipedia are predominantly male, college educated, white and in their 30s. Therefore, to make Wikipedia a better place we need to make learning how to edit and maintain Wikipedia accessible for all and we need to persuade people to get involved from all backgrounds to try to address the systemic bias on Wikipedia.

One way is through edit-a-thons, where people come together with a goal to edit and create articles around a particular topic. For example, a group called Women in Red create Wikipedia articles about notable women that are lacking from Wikipedia and they helped to increase the percentage of articles about women on the English Wikipedia from around 15% to around 18%. During my summer, I attended events aim at improving representation of women such as the NHLI Wikithon for Women in Science and events hosted by the Women’s Classical Committee. Both had great speakers and showed me the possibility for social activism that Wikipedia holds.

Another way to increase access to Wikipedia is through training materials. Making accessible and understandable ‘how to’ videos and content for Wikipedia and Wikidata, an open machine-readable database, has been a main focus of my internship and over the last few weeks I have been finalising what I have made and making a website for this information. This is not a final solution for Wikipedia and Wikidata training but hopefully it will be a place where most questions can be answered for those taking their tentative first steps into the world of wiki. Not only do we need to persuade people to edit but we also need them to continue to edit and this training resource could mean that there is a safety net for new editors to fall back on for help.

Working from home has had its difficulties. Waiting for software, for a headset and sending many emails which could have been short conversations in person are some of the things that have slowed down my work. It also is important to stay motivated when working from home as the days can blur especially when there is no distinction between home and work. However, the team at the university have been very friendly, they have been around to have video calls if I need any help and extremely supportive. Everyone is going through a strange time and working from home has been a good learning curve and one that will be important for my final year at university where most of my studying will take place remotely.

I am grateful for the skills I have learnt this summer during my internship and for an opportunity to learn about the positive work that we can collectively do on the internet. Hopefully, I will continue to edit Wikipedia and in a small way increase representation on the internet and open access to knowledge for all.

Thanks especially to Ewan McAndrew for all the help and guidance this summer!

Internship Blog #2: 4 weeks into my Wikimedia Internship by Hannah Rothmann

I have now finished 4 very busy weeks of my Wikimedia Training Internship! These past few weeks I have begun developing ideas and plans for training materials for Wikipedia and Wikidata and for a website where I can share these materials. This has meant that, among other things, I have been learning how to create a website and how to use screen capturing software; all useful skills! There have been some stumbling blocks in getting the relevant access to the necessary sites so I have spent time ensuring I had the skills to access platforms such as EdWeb.  Everything has now been sorted out and hopefully I will be able to progress smoothly for the next 8 weeks of the internship!

The website that I want to create will showcase the work that the Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh, Ewan McAndrew, is doing, explain the importance of Wikipedia and Wikidata, explore real life examples of using both platforms and hopefully give all novices the skills they need to feel confident using these platforms. It will be a mix of videos, pdfs, images and texts and I am looking forward to having a finished website which will be useful to many people embarking on their wiki-journey!

Working from home is still a strange experience but luckily frequent calls with colleagues and Wikimedians outside of the university ensure that I feel connected and part of something. Last week, I was able to sit in on some of the talks at the Celtic Knot Conference 2020 (originally meant to be held in Ireland) which changed up my routine a little. This conference  clearly exemplified how Wikipedia and especially Wikidata can cause real life change. The focus of this conference was

‘to bring people together to share their experiences of working on sharing information in minority languages’

and the organisers wanted to have

‘a strong focus on Wikidata and its potential to support languages’.[1]

One of the talks I attended was led by Léa Lacroix and Nicolas Vigneron who showed us how to input Wikidata lexemes. For example, Nicolas used Breton as the language he was inputting. This function of Wikidata is significant in ensuring that a record of these languages is accessible for many people in many languages. This is important work considering a recent study suggested that Scots Gaelic, for example, could die out within the decade.

The next few weeks I will be focusing on creating videos, the website and editing all of these materials. I will be also attending the Women’s Classical Committee UK Wiki colloquium at the end of July which describes itself as

‘a crowd-sourced initiative that aims to increase the representation of women classicists (very broadly conceived) on Wikipedia.’[2]

This neatly combines my degree, Classics, with the new skills and interests I am developing from this internship and it is a good way I can practically put these new skills to use diversifying Wikipedia!

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Knot_Conference_2020

[2] https://ics.sas.ac.uk/events/event/22700

Internship Blog #3: #WCCWiki Colloquium 2020 by Hannah Rothmann

Credit: Statue of Hygeia, copy of orginal in vatican. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Today I had the chance to attend the #WCCWiki Colloquium 2020. This was an event organised by the Women’s Classical Committee UK. #WCCWiki describes itself as

‘a crowd-sourced initiative that aims to increase the representation of women classicists (very broadly conceived) on Wikipedia.’ [1]

Since they started in 2016, they have edited and/or created more than 450 Wikipedia pages for women classicists. This is an impressive feat and important to increase the diversity on Wikipedia. You may be wondering why we need to increase the diversity of pages about Classics on Wikipedia? It is because the gender bias on Wikipedia becomes even clearer when looking at classics:

‘one Wikipedia editor estimated in 2016 that only 7% of biographies of classicists featured women’.[2]

This statistic has become less extreme due to the efforts of #WCCWiki but there is still lots of work for us to do.

At the event itself, there were a series of talks ranging from why it is important for us to edit Wikipedia to LGBTQ+ Wikipedia editing. The talks touched upon the issues that editors come across when creating new articles. For example, Adam Parker discussed notability. When creating new biographies on Wikipedia notability is a really important aspect to focus on. It is usually because of failing the criteria for notability that new articles are excluded. Jess Wade faced this issue when writing about the nuclear chemist Clarice Phelps.[3] Phelps’ page caused controversy with editors deleting her page numerous times. Eventually, by January 2020 her page was restored. This happened again when a page made for Donna Strickland after she had won the Nobel Prize for Physics was deleted.[4] However, there were issues surrounding the original page created for Donna Strickland and these are explored in a post by the Wikimedia Foundation which also explains some of the problems that come up when thinking about notability.[5] These issues surrounding notability come up again and again and are a continual battle.

In the afternoon, Miller Power gave an important talk on LGBTQ+ Wikipedia editing. He discussed the issues that the LGBTQ+ community face on Wikipedia such as queer erasure and harassment which can lead to edit wars. For example, this could be changing pronouns or using deadnames when it is not necessary. An example of one of these edit wars is the Wikipedia page for Harry Allen (trans man) where corrections kept needed to be made. Miller Power also discussed what we should be aware of when writing about LGBTQ+ people on Wikipedia including consistently using correct gendered language and avoiding outdated language and phrases such as ‘used to be a man’.

It was a positive and informative day that really showed what a group of motivated people are able to achieve. If you want to edit or create pages here is a list on the Women’s Classical Committee project page and they are also planning an online editing session on the 19th August.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Women%27s_Classical_Committee/Colloquia

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/dec/12/female-scholars-are-marginalised-on-wikipedia-because-its-written-by-men

[3] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/female-scientists-pages-keep-disappearing-from-wikipedia–whats-going-on/3010664.article

[4] https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nobel-prize-winner-physics-2018-donna-strickland-wikipedia-entry-deleted-sexism-equality-a8572006.html

[5] https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2018/10/04/donna-strickland-wikipedia/

Internship Blog #1: My First Week by Hannah Rothmann

Hi, my name is Hannah and I will be going into the final year of my Classics degree in September. I have just finished week 1 of my Wikimedia Training Internship; the start date was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty that came with it. Adjusting to working remotely from home, meeting new people but over video calls and Microsoft teams and also learning about entirely new things has meant that it has been a strange and somewhat nerve-racking first week and not what I would have expected from a summer internship a year ago. Thankfully, my line manager, Ewan McAndrew, has been very welcoming and made me feel at ease despite this novel situation!

The Wikimedia Training Internship caught my attention among a long and varied list of Employ.Ed internships. The aim of my internship of is to create materials to teach people how to edit and use Wikipedia and Wikidata with the goal of them becoming active editors and contributing to a growing database of free, credible and jointly gathered information. I was shocked when I discovered this week that only around 18% of biographical pages on the English Wikipedia are about women! Hopefully, by making more accessible teaching materials we will be able to address this imbalance and increase the diversity of Wikipedia and Wikidata. This means making resources that avoid complicated jargon, address all stumbling blocks a beginner wiki-user may encounter and will enable the uninitiated to become confident editors and contributors. Wikimedia UK believes

‘that open access to knowledge is a fundamental right’ and in the ‘democratic creation, distribution and consumption of knowledge’.[1]

These aims demonstrate the importance of the work of Wikimedia UK. My line manager Ewan stressed this importance and that Wikimedia related activities have a growing significance in a learning environment shifting more towards the digital world when he had to argue that the internship should go ahead despite financial impact COVID-19 on the university; many internships were cancelled. My internship will hopefully enable remote learning and help people see how they can change their approach to teaching to incorporate Wikimedia related activities into how students learn.

This aim means that the work I am doing is firmly rooted in the present and even the future. Just this week I have learnt new ways to use technology and skills which will be indispensable in a world moving ever more into the realm of online, online learning and the online experience. Although at first glance this internship appears in direct contrast to my Classics degree, which is focussed among other things on reading and interpreting ancient texts, the aim of a Classics degree, in my opinion, is to understand that ideas and concepts of whatever period always have relevance and there is always the possibility of continual learning.  The different skills I will develop in my internship and the skills I am learning from my degree will hopefully enrich my approach to work and any work that I do in this time and in the future.

So far, I have been getting used to remote working and all the quirks that come with it (hoovering is not something that goes too well with a work video call for example!) and I have also been figuring out where the gaps are in the current resources that Ewan has to teach people about Wikipedia and Wikidata while also filling in my rather large gaps of knowledge. For example, I had no idea what Wikidata really was before the start of my first week and I am still trying to understand it fully. I was lucky enough to attend the NHLI Women in Science Wikithon at the end of my first week which gave me a chance to implement what I had learnt about Wikipedia editing and it showed me how much more still needs to be done to improve diversity. Dr Jess Wade, who was Wikimedia UK’s Wikimedian of the year 2019, gave an introduction exploring why we should all edit Wikipedia. She has personally made hundreds and hundreds of Wikipedia pages for women and for notable women in science who previously had been ignored and in doing this has increased awareness regarding Wikipedia and how it can be used to tackle inequality and lack of diversity. After this introduction, it was a treat to have some training from Dr Alice White who showed us how to begin editing and creating our own pages. I edited some pages already created but lacking details, for example a page about Dr Susan Bewley, as I did not feel quite ready to begin making my own pages. The work Dr Jess Wade has been doing and continues to do along with this event really showed me how Wikipedia could be used as a force for good and also the importance of ensuring people have access to learning materials.

I am excited about getting to grips with my internship, developing skills, challenging my abilities all with the aim to make Wikipedia and Wikidata a platform that anyone anywhere will feel able to use, edit and appreciate!

 

[1] https://wikimedia.org.uk/ viewed 30/06/2020

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