Wikipedia workshop – not only for besserwissers!

Last Friday in March, I was participating in the Wikipedia workshop by Wikimedia in cooperation with Lund University. The Wikipedia workshop was led by John Andersson, Project Wikimedia Sweden and Sara Mörtsell, Training Wikimedia Sweden. Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) is a non-profit group, operating Wikipedia, communicating outwards, while those who work on Wikipedia are working on the job online and writing.

We Canmovians are scientists that want to share knowledge and research novelty on Wikipedia. 

It is easy! It turns out, you don´t even have to log in to contribute to Wikipedia. Go to Wikipedia and search for whatever you want to find. Let´s say, that you don´t find it. Someone need to get greasy and do the job. You click “You can ask for it to be created” (just below search results) and you have started creating an article on Wikipedia! It´s that simple. More simple still, is to edit an existing post.

Facts about the world's 6th largest website
Wikipedia has about 500 million readers every month. It was launched 15 of January 2001 (now called Wikipedia Day by some users). Every day, 300 items are coming in to the Swedish Wikipedia site, but only 100 articles get past the gatekeepers. Apparently, Wikipedia is no place to post your CV, images or personal views. Still, some will always try!

1 in 10 people that write on Wikipedia is a woman. Get started girls. If not for yourself, do it for equality for future women (your kids).

Wiki in Education

Students use Wikipedia extensively, probably more than any other social group. Academics discredit the website for several reasons: articles can be written by anyone, not necessarily an expert. Editing and regulation are imperfect and a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing. Despite Wikipedia's drawbacks, students will continue to take advantage of the resource – and the response of academics to simply advise against using the site is not likely to have much effect.

Lund University see it as a chance for scientists and communicators to expertly write about their areas of knowledge. It is a channel to work with outreach that we cannot ignore anymore. If you missed this workshop, you have your chance in June again! More information will come as the date closes in.

Using Wikipedia

Veracity

Something that has been the topic of the day ever since Wikipedia was created, and that is how we can make sure that the information posted is true. There are 3 tools that make it easier to judge the veracity of articles.

1. Are there any references/sources in a post?
2. History – click the History-button to see the history of the article. You can see when it was posted and all the entries and changes in the post. Little or no changes, signals that nobody has been checking it. More history makes it more likely that the material in the post has been changed a lot.
3. Discussion – there is a discussion-page for every post. Here, Wikipedia-editors start a discussion online to talk about the post. Little or no discussion can be a sign of no examination. Error in a post is changed or removed very quickly by experts. Posts are even polished a little bit to become easier to read. The experts (frequently correcting all kinds of posts) are very alert and change your stuff fast. To track the changes, you can subscribe to your post of interest by subscribing to a watchlist. To do that, you need to have an account on Wikipedia and be logged in.

Write and edit in Wikipedia

To get a crash course: http://wikipediaineducation.weebly.com/

What I did during the workshop

I added all the Linneus centers in Sweden to an existing Wiki-post called “Linné-bidragen”. Since there is no CAnMove-post on Wikipedia yet, I created a Swedish post linked to the Linné-bidragen-post, and wrote a little about CAnMove.

Just hours after the creation, a Wikipedia expert that frequently go through new posts, commented on the Centre for Animal Movement-post: Why is it necessary for this post to exist in Wikipedia? Is there any encyclopedic relevance for this post? 

I am working on it, but I need your help. Go here: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_animal_movement. Have a look and start writing (in Swedish)!