Science in Wikipedia

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00:00:15.08 Hi. My name is Frank Schulenburg and I'm the Wikimedia Foundation's
00:00:20.06 Head of Public Outreach. The Wikimedia Foundation is the organization
00:00:25.18 behind Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that everybody can edit.
00:00:30.14 So I'm here today to tell you more about Wikipedia and
00:00:35.29 why you as a science student should help Wikipedia to get better.
00:00:41.17 Let me start with a story about what impact Wikipedia can have.
00:00:48.10 This is the story of Judy. And Judy is the mother of a 20 year old daughter
00:00:56.19 from Florida and Judy's daughter was diagnosed with cancer
00:01:02.05 at the age of 2. So 18 years ago, and at that time, Judy spent hours
00:01:10.00 in medical libraries to get more information about the specific type
00:01:14.19 of cancer that her daughter had. And 18 years ago, I mean,
00:01:21.22 she could find little information
00:01:24.05 about that specific type of cancer. She couldn't understand
00:01:29.05 the medical terms she was reading. However, her daughter survived.
00:01:35.08 And then, 12 years later, Judy's daughter was diagnosed with
00:01:41.09 a different kind of cancer and this time Judy used the internet
00:01:47.23 and Wikipedia. She was armed with knowledge about the disease,
00:01:53.12 its causes, and possible treatments. And she sent us an email last year
00:02:00.03 when we were in the middle of our yearly fundraiser, and Judy said
00:02:05.17 "Wikipedia and the internet has helped me to gain a sense of control
00:02:11.16 over the uncontrollable." I think this is a really nice story to see
00:02:20.09 how Wikipedia impacts the lives of people. So let me tell you more
00:02:28.09 about Wikipedia, let me give you some numbers, and let me tell you
00:02:32.08 more about who's behind Wikipedia, who writes it. Let's start with
00:02:37.18 the numbers. Wikipedia right now has 18 million articles in more
00:02:44.26 than 260 languages. And what I find really impressive is that Wikipedia
00:02:53.14 worldwide, all of these language versions, get more than
00:02:57.29 400 million unique visitors per month. And all the content of Wikipedia
00:03:06.22 is written by volunteers. People like you and me. There are more
00:03:15.25 than 100,000 of volunteers who write Wikipedia articles, and they
00:03:22.08 don't get paid. They just do it because they like to learn
00:03:27.02 and they like to teach others and they like to share their knowledge
00:03:32.00 with others. And they all believe in the same vision, that vision statement
00:03:37.29 of the Wikimedia foundation, that is, we believe that it's good to create
00:03:43.20 a world where every single human being on this planet has access
00:03:49.25 to the sum of all knowledge. And now, back to the topic. So I said
00:03:57.23 I want to give you some reasons why you as science students
00:04:01.28 should help Wikipedia to get better. And I have three reasons.
00:04:05.23 First of all, if you write Wikipedia articles, you will learn a lot.
00:04:14.22 You will learn to translate your special knowledge to a general audience.
00:04:22.08 To an audience of people like Judy, who needs information and
00:04:29.06 who needs information that is written in an easy to understand language.
00:04:34.17 So you will also learn to write better. You will improve your writing skills,
00:04:42.13 because you will interact with the community of Wikipedia editors
00:04:47.16 and the readers, and you will get feedback, and people will tell you
00:04:50.29 "Hey, there is something that I didn't understand, and maybe you
00:04:54.17 can write it in a different way." So that feedback is really good.
00:05:00.01 And then also what you will learn is, you will improve
00:05:04.09 your digital media literacy skills, because when you write
00:05:09.21 Wikipedia articles, you will learn a lot about Wikipedia's culture and
00:05:15.14 you will learn a lot about what makes a good article and why are some
00:05:20.05 articles not as good as other articles, so you will learn a lot about
00:05:26.04 how the quality of Wikipedia, how Wikipedia gets created and that's
00:05:33.23 one of the big learnings. So the second reason why I think you as a
00:05:40.10 science student should help Wikipedia to get better is, you can give
00:05:45.07 something back. So I guess that most of you use Wikipedia
00:05:52.10 at least once a week. And let me tell you about me, I use
00:05:59.07 Wikipedia every day and five years ago I decided I wanted to give
00:06:05.00 something back to Wikipedia. So I studied history and five years ago
00:06:11.00 I started to improve history articles on Wikipedia, and it gives me
00:06:15.25 a good feeling because I'm taking information from Wikipedia every day.
00:06:20.18 I learn a lot, I enjoy reading Wikipedia articles, so I give something back.
00:06:25.08 So the third reason why I think you as a science student should help
00:06:31.05 Wikipedia to get better is that huge audience that Wikipedia has.
00:06:37.20 Imagine the cancer article on the English Wikipedia gets
00:06:42.29 more than 200,000 views per month. Isn't that amazing?
00:06:49.20 So many views? I remember when I wrote articles for scientific journals,
00:06:55.22 maybe I got 20 readers or so. But on Wikipedia, my articles reach
00:07:04.13 much more people, and this is a great thing. So imagine you would
00:07:09.09 help to make the cancer article better, and you would get
00:07:14.03 more than 200,000 views per month. Wouldn't that be great?
00:07:19.12 So here's the three reasons again, you will learn a lot,
00:07:24.17 you can give something back to Wikipedia, and you will write
00:07:30.01 for a huge audience. And now there are many ways you can help Wikipedia
00:07:37.21 to get better. You can just take a look at an article and look at
00:07:44.05 the language, and maybe you want to copy-edit it. It's very easy.
00:07:48.11 You just click on the edit button, and you can start copy-editing
00:07:52.16 and then you click save and everything is done and you've helped
00:07:55.17 Wikipedia to get better. You can also fact check Wikipedia articles,
00:08:00.12 existing Wikipedia articles, or you can upload pictures or you can even start
00:08:05.16 a new Wikipedia article, and it's really easy. Go to Wikipedia,
00:08:11.16 click on the edit button and then start editing. And you can help
00:08:17.06 people like Judy to find the information that they need.
00:08:23.23 Thank you very much.

This Talk

Speaker: Frank Schulenburg

Audience:

General Public
Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: June 2011

Talk Overview

In this talk, Frank Schulenberg talks about writing articles related to science in Wikipedia. Schulenburg outlines three main reasons why scientists should contribute to Wikipedia; you will learn a lot from the feedback of editors and readers, it is a chance to give back to the Wikipedia community, and your writing will have a much larger audience than in most traditional journals.

Speaker Bio

Frank Schulenburg

Frank Schulenburg is Head of Public Outreach for the Wikimedia Foundation. He is passionate about providing high quality, accessible, educational information for all. Continue Reading