Wikipedia Content Research Articles

Public Archaeology's Mammoth in the Room: Engaging Wikipedia as a Tool for Teaching and Outreach

AbstractAlthough archaeology has become increasingly concerned with engaging diverse publics, and has embraced the internet as a means of facilitating such engagement, attitudes towards Wikipedia have—understandably—been more ambivalent. Nevertheless, we argue here, Wikipedia's popularity and reach mean that archaeologists should actively engage with the website by adding and improving archaeological content. One way to do this is in the classroom: this paper provides a detailed how-to for instructors interested in having students create new Wikipedia content. We provide a case study in Wikipedia engagement from an advanced undergraduate course on African Archaeology, assess a program (Wiki Education) designed to help, and suggest further avenues for future outreach. We conclude that Wikipedia's utopian mission aligns with many of the goals of public archaeology, and argue that archaeology has much to gain by engaging with—rather than ignoring or even shunning—Wikipedia.

Translating Scientific Articles to the Non-scientific Public Using the Wikipedia Encyclopedia

The multilingual, web-based Wikipedia free Encyclopedia is used worldwide by people from different audience. It is openly editable, allowing quick updates. We used these properties as an educational tool in University classrooms, where students’ assignment was to rephrase scientific articles for the public. We share here our teaching experience with an Earth Sciences class, based on class assessments and students evaluations. During the 2017 Fall semester, a 1 ECTS MSc level reading seminar on the broad topic of Heat and Mass Transfers in Magmatology was taught for 6 weeks at ETH Zurich. Three first semester and six third semester M.Sc. students have attended the course. All students had a B.Sc. degree in Earth Sciences, among which seven had their main specialisation in Mineralogy and Geochemistry and two had their major in Geophysics. By groups of two, students have read a scientific article, presented it orally to classmates and answered questions from their peers. During the last two classes, students have edited and created Wikipedia Encyclopedia pages in relation to their article’s topic. Students really enjoyed creating a Wikipedia page, even if they didn’t use it before or didn’t trust the Wikipedia content. They had little experience with communication to a non-scientific audience and considered this exercise was challenging. Evaluations show that writing about a scientific paper in a Wikipedia page is a less efficient learning technique than reading a scientific article, presenting it orally or listening to such a presentation. However, it certainly contributes to better memorise important information, it is an efficient way to practice writing and public and scientific communication skills and it encourages students to work collaboratively on real-time projects. The teachers can use those combined effects as a multi-channel learning technique. It is also highly motivating for the students and the teacher to have a class exercise using modern media techniques with the potential to reach a wide international community. With this article, we wish to encourage colleagues to teach students how to communicate science, to scientific peers and to the non-scientific public. This promotes high-quality education and helps reducing inequality, two sustainable development global goals.

“Blind Trust is Not Enough”

This article draws attention to the often-unseen information inequalities that occur in the way that Wikipedia content is referenced. Drawing on digital information control and virtual gatekeeping scholarship, we contend that by not considering the degree to which references are practically accessible and verifiable, Wikipedia editors are implicitly promoting a control mechanism that is limiting the potential of Wikipedia to serve, as Willinsky puts it, “as a gateway to a larger world of knowledge.” We question the widespread practice of referencing peer-reviewed literature that is obscured by prohibitive paywalls. As we see it, two groups are disadvantaged by this practice. First, Wikipedia editors who lack access to the most current scholarly literature are unable to verify a reference or confirm the veracity of a fact or figure. Second, and perhaps most important, general readers are left with two unsatisfactory options in this scenario: they can either trust the authority of the citation or pay to access the article. Building on Don Fallis’ work on epistemic consequences of Wikipedia, this paper contends that promoting practically verifiable references would work to mitigate these inequalities and considers how relatively new initiatives could be used to improve the quality and utility of Wikipedia more generally.
 Pre-print first published online 03/03/2019

Hacking History: Redressing Gender Inequities on Wikipedia Through an Editathon

Editathons are a relatively new type of learning event, which enable participants to create or edit Wikipedia content on a particular topic. This paper explores the experiences of nine participants of an editathon at the University of Edinburgh on the topic of the Edinburgh Seven, who were the first women to attend medical school in 19th century United Kingdom. This study draws on the critical approach to learning technology to position and explore an editathon as a learning opportunity to increase participants’ critical awareness of how the Internet, open resources, and Wikipedia are shaping how we engage with information and construct knowledge. Within this, there is a particular focus on recognising persisting gender inequities and biases online. The qualitative interviews captured rich narrative learning stories, which traced the journey participants took during the editathon. Participants transformed from being online information consumers to active contributors (editors), prompting new critical understandings and an evolving sense of agency. The participants’ learning was focused in three primary areas: (1) a rewriting of history that redresses gender inequities and the championing of the female voice on Wikipedia (both as editors and subject matter); (2) the role of Wikipedia in shaping society’s access to and engagement with information, particularly information on traditionally marginalised subjects, and the interplay of the individual and the collective in developing and owning that knowledge; and (3) the positioning of traditional media in the digital age.

A Wikipédia como fonte de informação de referência: avaliação e perspectivas

A Wikipédia é citada em revistas científicas de alto impacto, apesar de sua má reputação como fonte de informação. O que sustenta essa aceitação? Em busca de respostas, este artigo apresenta uma avaliação da Wikipédia anglófona segundo o roteiro de Silberger para obras de referência quanto ao propósito, alcance, arranjo, informação dada, acesso e características especiais, com um aspecto adicional: o controle da qualidade do conteúdo. Complementa essa avaliação um relato da experiência do autor na criação de um verbete em português. Em conclusão, a Wikipédia tem conteúdo de alta qualidade, com vantagens como o grande volume de conteúdo em muitas línguas, bem como desvantagens, como a ênfase em tópicos “populares”. Há também conteúdo inadequado, cuja contenção e reparo dependem da capacidade e engajamento da comunidade linguística que a edita, bem como do respeito a seus princípios editoriais. Há oportunidade para engajar estudantes do ensino superior na criação de conteúdos, bem como na avaliação, que é uma forma de revisão por pares. O bom uso da Wikipédia depende essencialmente da capacidade crítica do leitor.Palavras-chave: Wikipédia. Enciclopédias. Obras de referência. Curadoria digital. Revisão pelos pares. Link: http://portaldeperiodicos.eci.ufmg.br/index.php/pci/article/view/3224/2065

WHAT LEADS UKRAINIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TO USE WIKIPEDIA?

The Internet provides students with information from a great number of online sources. Wikipedia is one of the most frequently suggested by search engines and popular students’ reference websites. The purpose of the research was to study students’ use and attitudes of Wikipedia and to find out the patterns of Wikipedia use as an information source for academic purposes amongst different student groups in a Ukrainian university considering the language used. The results revealed that the overwhelming majority of students used Wikipedia and most of the respondents used it for academic purposes. Students were likely to value Wikipedia’s being short and informative for writing assignments at the beginning of their work. However, the findings suggest that Wikipedia’s usage is restricted by the coverage and completeness of the Wikipedia content in students’ native language and the level of their knowledge of English. We found that students’ major, year and mode of study as well as teachers’ approval can also relate to their use of Wikipedia in relation to university studies.

Authorship disambiguation in a collaborative editing environment

“Wikipedia”, known as the world's largest online free encyclopedia, is one of the remarkable examples of crowdsourcing, where millions of articles have been produced by volunteers from all over the world. Wikipedia allows anyone to edit articles without being pre-screened or authorized. A user can edit articles using either a valid ID or an IP address. The freedom of editing using ID or IP makes editorial identities ambiguous. This may affect the integrity of the research process. It also facilitates malicious users to vandalize Wikipedia content. Disambiguation of users' identity in Wikipedia can assist in distinguishing between trusted and mischievous users and more important in defining authorship in a less ambiguous manner. The present paper introduces a new methodology to ascertain Wikipedia authorship and to reduce ambiguity of user IDs. Our methodology uses the editing activity of users as a distinguishing feature for identifying non-ambiguous profiles. Reducing ambiguity of authorship can facilitate understanding of human behavior in collaborative editing, predicting sock puppetry (duplicate accounts), detecting anomaly, identifying trustworthy as well as offensive authors, and in improving security procedures and research in online social media. Our experimental results indicate that it is possible to disambiguate with high degree of certainty the editorial activity by 75% at rank 1.

Wikipedia in the Science Classroom

Despite research suggesting that writing-to-learn exercises (WTL) in the classroom are associated with increased student learning, WTL is still not widely implemented in science courses. To provide our students with a meaningful WTL exercise that also teaches them how to write for the general public, we incorporated the Wiki Education Classroom Program into scientific writing courses at Ohio University. Our objectives for Wikipedia in the science classroom are two-fold 1) inward facing: teaching students how to critically evaluate and write for the general public, and about how the content of Wikipedia is generated and thus how to use Wikipedia more effectively and 2) outward facing: to increase and enhance scientific content. Students are instructed to select research topics of interest within the scope of the course and related Wikipedia articles to evaluate and edit. Evaluations follow the criteria set forth by Wiki Education and are submitted to the talk page of each corresponding article, enabling the public to view student comments and suggestions. Students then edit their articles based on their evaluations and classroom discussions. Our students have contributed to 99 articles, with 1,514 edits and 83,310 words added, and these articles have been viewed over 2.3 million times. Post-course surveys indicated that students found the exercises to be informative and empowered many to make contributions outside of class.

'Brain Gain' on Wikipedia: Immigrants Return Knowledge Home

Economic literature acknowledges the impact of immigration on cross-border patenting and scientific publications. However, the role of immigration ows in the dissemination of knowledge in a broader sense is yet to be assessed. In this paper, I estimate the effect of immigration on the facilitation of online knowledge reagrding destination countries in the native languages of immigrants. To quantify online knowledge, I focus on one of the world's most viewed online knowledge platforms, Wikipedia. I combine data on immigration ows between the pairs of immigrants' origin and destination countries with contributions to Wikipedia describing the countries of immigrants' destinations in the languages spoken in immigrants' origin countries. I specifically focus on knowledge domains describing science and culture. In order to draw a causal inference, I use shocks to immigration due to economic and political crises as exogenous shocks to Wikipedia content and analyze subsequent changes in the contributions to Wikipedia. An increase in immigration yields more knowledge contributed to Wikipedia about science and culture in destination countries in the native languages of the origin countries. Interestingly, the increase in contributions is driven by anonymous contributors. In the Wikipedia community, these are considered occasional contributors who care personally about the topics they contribute to. The increase in content generated anonymously is driven by longer contributions.

A Wikipédia como fonte de informação de referência: avaliação e perspectivas

Resumo A Wikipédia é citada em revistas científicas de alto impacto, apesar de sua má reputação como fonte de informação. O que sustenta essa aceitação? Em busca de respostas, este artigo apresenta uma avaliação da Wikipédia anglófona segundo o roteiro de Silberger para obras de referência quanto ao propósito, alcance, arranjo, informação dada, acesso e características especiais, com um aspecto adicional: o controle da qualidade do conteúdo. Complementa essa avaliação um relato da experiência do autor na criação de um verbete em português. Em conclusão, a Wikipédia tem conteúdo de alta qualidade, com vantagens como o grande volume de conteúdo em muitas línguas, bem como desvantagens, como a ênfase em tópicos “populares”. Há também conteúdo inadequado, cuja contenção e reparo dependem da capacidade e engajamento da comunidade linguística que a edita, bem como do respeito a seus princípios editoriais. Há oportunidade para engajar estudantes do ensino superior na criação de conteúdos, bem como na avaliação, que é uma forma de revisão por pares. O bom uso da Wikipédia depende essencialmente da capacidade crítica do leitor.

A Rule-Based Approach for Converting Wikipedia Content into Semantic Relations

A Rule-Based Approach for Converting Wikipedia Content into Semantic Relations

Wikipedia as one of the Tools Of Information War And Influence On The Educational System

The article analyzes Wikipedia as one of the problem components of national information security of different countries, and as a factor of influence on the educational system. We considered all components of this problem. We proposed ways to solve this problem. Wikipedia should be politically indifferent. The true encyclopedia is an encyclopedia of timeless and eternal knowledge, and the present is not yet encyclopedic and controversial. Something that is being established should not be the basis for Wikipedia content (political topics, etc.). How can we make it so that Wikipedia is just a collection of truths, rather than a site of conflicts and disputes, particularly interethnic ones?

Wikipedia as one of the Tools Of Information War And Influence On The Educational System

The article analyzes Wikipedia as one of the problem components of national information security of different countries, and as a factor of influence on the educational system. We considered all components of this problem. We proposed ways to solve this problem. Wikipedia should be politically indifferent. The true encyclopedia is an encyclopedia of timeless and eternal knowledge, and the present is not yet encyclopedic and controversial. Something that is being established should not be the basis for Wikipedia content (political topics, etc.). How can we make it so that Wikipedia is just a collection of truths, rather than a site of conflicts and disputes, particularly interethnic ones?

Czy Wikipedia może być przydatna w nauczaniu historii książki i bibliotek?

Teza/cel artykułu – Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie Wikipedii jako źródła informacji na temat historii książki polskiej XV i XVI w., przydatności treści w popularyzacji wiedzy na temat historii książki oraz w dydaktyce bibliotekoznawczej. Przeanalizowano wybrane hasła dotyczące historii książki polskiej XV­XVI w., wykazano błędy, nieścisłości, braki, ale też przyjrzano się korektom błędnych treści, dokonanym przez wikipedystów. Zaproponowano sposób wykorzystania Wikipedii z jej błędami i zaletami w nauczaniu historii książki. Metody badawcze – Podstawę artykułu stanowią materiały dotyczące historii drukarstwa polskiego XV­XVI w. zaczerpnięte z Wikipedii. Zastosowano metodę analizy i krytyki treści zawartych w Wikipedii. Wyniki i wnioski – Wykazano błędy w artykułach Wikipedii i podano w wątpliwość jej wartość informacyjną w odniesieniu do treści na temat historii książki, ukazano zalety, jakie wynikają ze społecznościowego współtworzenia treści internetowej encyklopedii, wskazano możliwości jej wykorzystania w dydaktyce bibliotekoznawczej na przykładzie zajęć dotyczących historii książki i bibliotek.

Locating foci of translation on Wikipedia

Abstract In spite of its highly multilingual nature, it is generally accepted that most Wikipedia content is the product of original writing rather than being translated from another language version of the encyclopaedia. Wikipedia represents what is almost a complete, self-contained but vast research ecosystem; however, an unusual initial challenge for the researcher is to identify the primary data for a specific research project. The main aim of this paper is to make a number of proposals towards a possible methodology for discovering where the main foci of this new type of collaborative translation are located. Significant methods for this include the use of the encyclopaedia’s list-based structure and of different features of page anatomy. The article also aims to outline specific topics for research and, during the discussion, offers some initial findings of its own, using Russian and Chinese to English translation as its main sources of examples.

Analyzing Accessibility of Wikipedia Projects Around the World

This study, conducted by the Internet Monitor project at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, analyzes the scope of government-sponsored censorship of Wikimedia sites around the world. The study finds that, as of June 2016, China was likely censoring the Chinese language Wikipedia project, and Thailand and Uzbekistan were likely interfering intermittently with specific language projects of Wikipedia as well. However, considering the widespread use of filtering technologies and the vast coverage of Wikipedia, our study finds that, as of June 2016, there was relatively little censorship of Wikipedia globally. In fact, our study finds there was less censorship in June 2016 than before Wikipedia’s transition to HTTPS-only content delivery in June 2015. HTTPS prevents censors from seeing which page a user is viewing, which means censors must choose between blocking the entire site and allowing access to all articles. This finding suggests that the shift to HTTPS has been a good one in terms of ensuring accessibility to knowledge. The study identifies and documents the blocking of Wikipedia content using two complementary data collection and analysis strategies: a client-side system that collects data from the perspective of users around the globe and a server-side tool to analyze traffic coming in to Wikipedia servers. Both client- and server-side methods detected events that we consider likely related to censorship, in addition to a large number of suspicious events that remain unexplained. The report features results of our data analysis and insights into the state of access to Wikipedia content in 15 select countries.

The Substantial Interdependence of Wikipedia and Google: A Case Study on the Relationship Between Peer Production Communities and Information Technologies

While Wikipedia is a subject of great interest in the computing literature, very little work has considered Wikipedia’s important relationships with other information technologies like search engines. In this paper, we report the results of two deception studies whose goal was to better understand the critical relationship between Wikipedia and Google. These studies silently removed Wikipedia content from Google search results and examined the effect of doing so on participants’ interactions with both websites. Our findings demonstrate and characterize an extensive interdependence between Wikipedia and Google. Google becomes a worse search engine for many queries when it cannot surface Wikipedia content (for example, click-through rates on results pages drop significantly) and the importance of Wikipedia content is likely greater than many improvements to search algorithms. Our results also highlight Google’s critical role in providing readership to Wikipedia. However, we also found evidence that this mutually beneficial relationship is in jeopardy: changes Google has made to its search results that involve directly surfacing Wikipedia content are significantly reducing traffic to Wikipedia. Overall, our findings argue that researchers and practitioners should give deeper consideration to the interdependence between peer production communities and the information technologies that use and surface their content.

Completeness, accuracy, and readability of Wikipedia as a reference for patient medication information

ObjectivesThis study determined the completeness, accuracy, and reading level of Wikipedia patient drug information compared with the corresponding United States product insert medication guides. MethodsFrom the Top 200 Drugs of 2012, the top 33 medications with medication guides were analyzed. Medication guides and Wikipedia pages were downloaded on a single date to ensure continuity of Wikipedia content. To quantify the completeness and accuracy of the Wikipedia medication information, a scoring system was adapted from previously published work and compared with the 7 core domains of medication guides. ResultsWikipedia did not provide patient information that was as complete or accurate as the information within the medication guides: 14.73 out of 42 (SD 5.75). Wikipedia medication pages were written at a significantly higher reading level compared with medication guides (Flesch reading ease score 52.93 vs. 33.24 [P <0.001]; Flesch-Kincaid grade level 10.26 vs. 6.86 [P <0.001]). ConclusionWikipedia medication pages include incomplete and inaccurate patient information compared with the corresponding product medication guides. Wikipedia patient drug information was also written at reading levels above that of medication guides and substantially above the average United States consumer health literacy level. As the public use of Wikipedia increases, the need for educating patients about the quality of information on Wikipedia and the availability of adequate patient education resources is ever more important to minimize inaccuracies and incomplete information sharing.

Why Medical Schools Should Embrace Wikipedia: Final-Year Medical Student Contributions to Wikipedia Articles for Academic Credit at One School.

Most medical students use Wikipedia as an information source, yet medical schools do not train students to improve Wikipedia or use it critically. Between November 2013 and November 2015, the authors offered fourth-year medical students a credit-bearing course to edit Wikipedia. The course was designed, delivered, and evaluated by faculty, medical librarians, and personnel from WikiProject Medicine, Wikipedia Education Foundation, and Translators Without Borders. The authors assessed the effect of the students' edits on Wikipedia's content, the effect of the course on student participants, and readership of students' chosen articles. Forty-three enrolled students made 1,528 edits (average 36/student), contributing 493,994 content bytes (average 11,488/student). They added higher-quality and removed lower-quality sources for a net addition of 274 references (average 6/student). As of July 2016, none of the contributions of the first 28 students (2013, 2014) have been reversed or vandalized. Students discovered a tension between comprehensiveness and readability/translatability, yet readability of most articles increased. Students felt they improved their articles, enjoyed giving back "specifically to Wikipedia," and broadened their sense of physician responsibilities in the socially networked information era. During only the "active editing months," Wikipedia traffic statistics indicate that the 43 articles were collectively viewed 1,116,065 times. Subsequent to students' efforts, these articles have been viewed nearly 22 million times. If other schools replicate and improve on this initiative, future multi-institution studies could more accurately measure the effect of medical students on Wikipedia, and vice versa.

Portrayals of Large Corporations in the English and German Version of Wikipedia – Exploring Similarities and Differences

High search results for Wikipedia articles in web search engines and the large number of Wikipedia articles about companies contribute to the online encyclopedia’s relevance for communication and reputation management. In this research, we compare Wikipedia articles of 30 US and 30 German corporations in both the English and German version of the online encyclopedia. Using content analysis, the articles’ structure, content and tone are analyzed and compared. Apart from broad similarities in regard to article structure, results reveal some striking differences between the versions. It shows that companies are portrayed more extensively in their domestic than in the foreign version of Wikipedia. This refers to the length of the overall article, the use of photographs as well as the validation of content. Detailed analyses of article content also reveal that companies are covered more extensively on the different reputation dimensions in their domestic than in the foreign version. Apart from the elaborateness of the portrayals, there is also more criticism in the form of a specific criticism section in domestic compared to foreign version articles. A general negative tendency can furthermore be observed particularly for content on workplace environment and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Contrary to the findings on criticism, content on CSR is more negative in the foreign compared to the domestic version of Wikipedia for both US and German corporations. The findings indicate that Wikipedia content is influenced by how the volunteer contributors to Wikipedia perceive and assess a corporation. Implications for communication management are discussed.