{"id":657,"date":"2018-01-16T12:36:19","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T12:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/?p=657"},"modified":"2018-01-16T12:36:19","modified_gmt":"2018-01-16T12:36:19","slug":"wikipedia-at-17-facts-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wikipedia-at-17-facts-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Wikipedia at 17 &#8211; Facts matter."},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>Wikipedia: the internet\u2019s favourite website <\/strong><strong>for information<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>As Wikipedia celebrates its 17th birthday this month, we are once again asking our colleagues to help share some fact-checked knowledge to Wikipedia as part of the global <a href=\"https:\/\/meta.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/The_Wikipedia_Library\/1Lib1Ref\">#1Lib1Ref<\/a> campaign (<strong>1 Librarian adding 1 Reference<\/strong>) and help assert that facts, not <em>alternative facts<\/em>, matter.<\/p>\n<p>The campaign runs from <strong>January 15th to February 3rd 2018<\/strong>. Everyone is welcome to participate (it is a global open platform after all).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"#1Lib1Ref - 1 Librarian adding 1 Reference to Wikipedia\" width=\"629\" height=\"354\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/11gq5UXEZIo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Wikipedia is already the 5th most visited website, the largest reference work on the internet and the single greatest open education resource in existence today. And that&#8217;s with only 120,000 regular contributors. Of whom, only around 3455 are considered &#8216;<em>very active<\/em>&#8216; Wikipedians.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the population of a village like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pitlochry\">Pitlochry<\/a> curating the world&#8217;s knowledge.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Imagine if the 13,000 staff and 36,000 at the University of Edinburgh all contributed a little of their time and expertise to improving the free encyclopedia.<\/li>\n<li>Imagine if ALL universities contributed.<\/li>\n<li>Imagine if ALL libraries contributed.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>While Pitlochry is near the famous <strong>18ft<\/strong> &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nts.org.uk\/Visit\/Killiecrankie\/\">Soldier&#8217;s Leap&#8217; at Killiecrankie (worth a visit)<\/a> <strong>#1Lib1Ref<\/strong> is your invitation to take a<em> small step<\/em> to find out how everyone can help improve Wikipedia.\u00a0 <strong>Simply add 1 citation to 1 fact on Wikipedia<\/strong> that has been tagged as needing verified with a &#8216;<span style=\"color: #0000ff\">Citation Needed<\/span>&#8216; tag between now and February 3rd 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wiki-games\/2017\/10\/26\/citation-hunt\/\">Citation Hunt tool<\/a> makes it so easy to help share fact-checked knowledge in 5 mins or less. <a href=\"https:\/\/media.ed.ac.uk\/media\/Wikipedia+1Lib1Ref+Campaign+-+1+Librarian+adding+to+1+Reference+to+Wikipedia+for+its+16th+birthday.\/1_n1gwc6px\/\">Watch how you can take part (5 mins).<\/a><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/meta.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/The_Wikipedia_Library\/1Lib1Ref\">Read more about #1Lib1Ref campaign<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wiki-games\/2017\/10\/26\/citation-hunt\/\">Learn about the Citation Hunt tool.<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.biodiversitylibrary.org\/2017\/01\/be-like-bhl-librarian-and-edit.html\">Step by step guide to taking part from the Biodiversity Library<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Oh and don&#8217;t forget to save your edits with an edit summary of <strong>#1Lib1Ref<\/strong> and <strong>#1Lib1RefEdUni<\/strong> if you&#8217;re participating at the University of Edinburgh so we can track how many edits are being made.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s see if we can&#8217;t add <em>101 citations<\/em> to Wikipedia by February 3rd!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_660\" style=\"width: 443px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/101-Citations.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-660\" class=\" wp-image-660\" src=\"http:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/101-Citations-300x169.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"433\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/101-Citations-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/101-Citations-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/101-Citations-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/101-Citations.png 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 433px) 100vw, 433px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-660\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Own work by Stinglehammer, CC-BY-SA.<\/p><\/div>\n<h2>Wikipedia at 17 &#8211; some facts<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The world\u2019s biggest encyclopedia turned 17 on January 15th 2018.<\/li>\n<li>English Wikipedia has 5.5m articles (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_Wikipedias#Detailed_list\">full list<\/a> of all 299 language Wikipedias)<\/li>\n<li>500 million visitors per month<\/li>\n<li>1.5 billion monthly unique devices per month.<\/li>\n<li>17 billion pageviews per month.<\/li>\n<li>More reliable than you think<\/li>\n<li>Vandalism removed more quickly than you think (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.andrew-g-west.com\/docs\/cicling_11_final.pdf\">only 7% of edit<\/a>s are considered vandalism).<\/li>\n<li>Used in schools &amp; universities to teach information literacy &amp; <a href=\"https:\/\/wikiedu.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/21\/why-wiki-eds-work-combats-fake-news-and-how-you-can-help\/\">help combat fake<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/wikiedu.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/21\/why-wiki-eds-work-combats-fake-news-and-how-you-can-help\/\">\u00a0news<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Guidelines around use of reliable sources, conflict of interest, verifiability, and neutral point of view.<\/li>\n<li>Articles \u2018looked after\u2019 (monitored and maintained) by editors from 2000+ <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wikipedia:WikiProject\">WikiProjects<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Includes a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wikipedia:WikiProject_assessment#Grades\">quality and ratings scale<\/a><\/li>\n<li>87.5% of students report using Wikipedia for their academic work.<\/li>\n<li>Used by 90% of medical students and 50-75% of physicians.<\/li>\n<li>It is <em>the<\/em> place people turn to orientate themselves on a topic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>Did Media Literacy backfire?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><em>\u201cToo many students I met were being told that Wikipedia was untrustworthy and were, instead, being encouraged to do research. As a result, the message that many had taken home was to turn to Google and use whatever came up first. <strong>They heard that Google was trustworthy and Wikipedia was not<\/strong>.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/points.datasociety.net\/did-media-literacy-backfire-7418c084d88d\">Boyd, 2017<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<h3><strong>\u201c<em>Search is the way we live now<\/em>\u201d \u2013 <span style=\"color: #3366ff\">G<\/span><span style=\"color: #ff0000\">o<\/span><span style=\"color: #ff6600\">o<\/span><span style=\"color: #3366ff\">g<\/span><span style=\"color: #339966\">l<\/span><span style=\"color: #ff0000\">e<\/span> and Wikipedia<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Google depends on Wikipedia<\/strong>. Click through rate decreases by 80% if Wikipedia links are removed.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Wikipedia depends on Google<\/strong>. 84.5% of visits to Wikipedia are attributable to Google.<\/li>\n<li>According to 2011 figures in Hillis, Petit &amp; Jarrett (2013), Google processed 91% of searches internationally and 97.4% of the searches made using mobile devices.<\/li>\n<li>Google\u2019s ranking algorithm also has a \u2018funnelling effect\u2019 according to Beel &amp; Gipp (2009); narrowing the sources clicked upon 90% of the time to just the first page of results with a 42% click through on the first choice alone.<\/li>\n<li>This means that addressing knowledge gaps on Wikipedia will surface the knowledge to Google\u2019s top ten results and increase clickthrough and knowledge-sharing. Wikipedia editing can therefore be seen as a form of activism in the democratisation of access to information.<\/li>\n<li>Did you know that you can nominate Wikipedia pages to be included on Wikipedia&#8217;s front page (viewed 25 million times a day on average)? We did just that for the noted sociologist <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mary_Susan_McIntosh\">Mary Susan McIntosh<\/a>&#8216;s Wikipedia page which was created for International Women&#8217;s Day in March 2017. From not having a Wikipedia page at all to 7000 views in 1 single day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>More <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@emcandre_15171\/did-you-know-mary-susan-mcintosh-ea79867292cc\">Did You Know facts<\/a> about Wikipedia.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/dont-cite-wikipedia3.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-659\" src=\"http:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/dont-cite-wikipedia3-300x225.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/dont-cite-wikipedia3-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/dont-cite-wikipedia3-768x576.png 768w, https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/dont-cite-wikipedia3-1024x768.png 1024w, https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2018\/01\/dont-cite-wikipedia3.png 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Don\u2019t cite Wikipedia, write Wikipedia.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Wikipedia does not want you to cite it.<\/strong> It considers itself a tertiary resource; an online encyclopedia built from articles which in turn are based on reliable, published, secondary sources.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Wikipedia is relentlessly transparent.<\/strong> Everything on Wikipedia can be checked, challenged and corrected. Cite the sources Wikipedia uses, not Wikipedia itself.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Wikipedia does need more subject specialists to engage with it to improve its coverage, however. More eyes on a page helps address omissions and improves the content.<\/p>\n<p>Feedback from staff and students who have engaged with editing Wikipedia:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/media.ed.ac.uk\/media\/Wikipedia+assignment+in+Reproductive+Biology+-+reflections+from+students+and+course+leaders\/1_qk5nhn3k\">Reflections on Wikipedia in the Classroom<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>Isn\u2019t editing Wikipedia hard?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Maybe it was a little hard once but not now. It\u2019s all dropdown menus now with the Visual Editor interface. So super easy, intuitive and \u201c<em>addictive as hell<\/em>\u201c!<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How easy is Wikipedia&#039;s new Visual Editor to use  - 5 min walkthrough\" width=\"629\" height=\"354\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xTADiNLFQcE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Do you need a quick overview of what all the buttons and menu options on Wikimedia do? Luckily we have just the very thing for you.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:What%27s_Where_on_Wiki.pdf\">What\u2019s where on Wiki?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>Want to get started?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wiki-basics\/\">Wiki Basics &#8211; step by step guide to getting started.<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Category:Wikipedia_in_the_Classroom_lesson_plan\">Lesson plan &#8211; how to run a Wikipedia training session.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>More reading<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/yougov.co.uk\/news\/2014\/08\/09\/more-british-people-trust-wikipedia-trust-news\/\">British people trust Wikipedia more than the BBC, Guardian, Telegraph and Times.<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/vindicated\/2016\/11\/your-middle-school-teacher-was-wrong-about-wikipedia-and-nbsp.html\">Your Middle School Teacher was wrong about Wikipedia <\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2016\/05\/people-love-wikipedia\/482268\/\">People love Wikipedia: the internet\u2019s favourite website.<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/article\/Wikipedia-Comes-of-Age\/125899\">Wikipedia comes of age \u2013 The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S1096751615000585?via%3Dihub\">Students\u2019 use of Wikipedia as an academic resource \u2014 Patterns of use and perceptions of usefulness<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2017\/10\/10\/updating-wikipedia-part-doctors-jobs\/?s_campaign=stat:rss&amp;utm_content=buffer35a41&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer\">Updating Wikipedia should be part of all doctor\u2019s job.<\/a><\/li>\n<li>See the page on <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bermuda_Triangle#See_also\">Bermuda Triangle <\/a>to see why reference librarians recommend Wikipedia for <em>pre-researching<\/em> a topic.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2016\/dec\/09\/where-are-all-the-women-wikipedia\">Where are all the women Wikipedia<\/a> (Guardian, 2016)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.ca\/entry\/wikipedia-gender-racial-bias_n_7054550\">Editors are trying to fix Wikipedia\u2019s gender and racial bias problem<\/a> (Huffington Post, 2015)<\/li>\n<li>Beel, J.; Gipp, B. (2009). <a href=\"http:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org\/xpl\/login.jsp?tp=&amp;arnumber=5089308&amp;url=http%253A%252F%252Fieeexplore.ieee.org%252Fxpls%252Fabs_all.jsp%253Farnumber%253D5089308\"><em>\u201cGoogle Scholar\u2019s ranking algorithm: The impact of citation counts (An empirical study)\u201d<\/em><\/a>. 2009 Third International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science: 439\u2013446. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Digital_object_identifier\">doi<\/a>:<a href=\"https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1109%2FRCIS.2009.5089308\">1109\/RCIS.2009.5089308<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Hillis, Ken; Petit, Michael; Jarrett, Kylie (2012). <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=R7Lzp7apkJgC\"><em>Google and the Culture of Search<\/em><\/a>. Routledge. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/w\/International_Standard_Book_Number\">ISBN<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/w\/Special:BookSources\/9781136933066\">9781136933066<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wikipedia: the internet\u2019s favourite website for information As Wikipedia celebrates its 17th birthday this month, we are once again asking our colleagues to help share some fact-checked knowledge to Wikipedia as part of the global #1Lib1Ref campaign (1 Librarian adding 1 Reference) and help assert that facts, not alternative facts, matter. The campaign runs from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,679,678,435,304,582,680,4,676,677],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1lib1ref","tag-101-citations","tag-101-dalmatians","tag-citation-hunt","tag-citation-needed","tag-did-you-know","tag-library-of-alexandria","tag-open-knowledge","tag-wikipedia-at-17","tag-wikipedia-birthday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":663,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions\/663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}