Wikimedia Projects and Citizen Science

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I intend to present an outline of my work as a citizen scientist. I use English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata to interlink databases, including GBIF, EOL, NZOR and Plant-SyNZ. All of these provide information on New Zealand endemic species. I link those databases to scientific literature, including the original description as well as the New Zealand conservation threat classification of the species. I also link to other pieces of information, such as photographs and illustrations as well as outreach efforts by Department of Conservation staff. In addition, I will explain how, by editing Wikidata, Wikimedians can assist in filling gaps that result from a lack of publicly available, comprehensive and authoritative databases. Using practical examples, I will show how data collated and curated in Wikidata can be queried. I will explain how information collated in Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons is ingested and reused by the citizen science observation platform iNaturalist. I intend to argue that this reuse assists with the creation of more accurate citizen science-generated biodiversity observation data. This in turn increases the depth of information known about particular species.