How Are You Using Wikipedia?
Posted by Brian Kelly on 28 Feb 2014
My Involvement With Wikipedia
Wikipedia logo. Used with a CC-By licence from Wikimedia Commons.
I signed up to Wikipedia in 2004 in order to create an entry for my hobby: rapper sword dancing. I saw the value of the service in providing a easy-to-use content creation tool which would benefit from crowd-sourcing content in order to maintain the content. However such ease-of-use and the crowd-sourcing model, in which anybody could edit the content, was initially not appreciated by many in the educational and library sectors. So although I created a small number of articles related to my professional interests (including Amplified conference and Microattribution) and encouraged use of Wikipedia (in blog posts such as Having An Impact Through Wikipedia, How Well-Read Are Technical Wikipedia Articles? and How Can We Assess the Impact and ROI of Contributions to Wikipedia?) I felt that such work was not appreciated as having value in promoting innovative use of technologies within the sector.
It was therefore only after having received notification of the cessation of Jisc funding for UKOLN, my host organisation, that I took advantage of our funder’s agreement that we could spend some time developing our professional skills to prepare for life after redundancy, that I became more involved with Wikipedia activities. This included joining Wikimedia UK and taken part in two Wikimedia UK events: the Queen Victoria’s Journals University of Oxford editing day which provided an initial opportunity to familiarise myself with the format of an editing workshop and participation in a Sphingonet Wiki workshop (see accompanying photograph), which provided me with initial experience in working with other Wikimedia experts.
Since leaving UKOLN I have continued by involvement with Wikipedia including taking the lead role in Facilitating a Wikipedia Editing Session at the SpotOn 2013 conference and attending the EduWiki 2013 conference. I will also be running a Wikipedia editing workshop session at the LILAC 2014 conference and supporting an edit-a-thon at the conference.
Such work is appropriate for my new role as Innovation Advocate at Cetis, since my work encourages use of innovative practices as well as innovative technologies. Interestingly the value of Wikipedia is now being appreciated by Jisc who, in conjunction with Wikimedia UK, are funding a Wikimedia Ambasssador.
I’m pleased that this post has been funded and that Jisc are helping to promote take-up of Wikipedia and related Wikimedia services across the sector. I hope this will help in seeing active use of Wikipedia move beyond the early adopters and become mainstream.
What Else Is Happening in the UK Higher / Further Education Sector?
The Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador post has been funded from July 2013 to March 2014. There will therefore be a need to ensure that sharing of approaches taken to use of Wikipedia continues to take place after the funding for the post finishes.
The Eduwiki 2013 conference held in Cardiff 0n 1-2 November 2013 provided a valuable opportunity to hear about ways n which Wikipedia is being used across the broad educational sector. I was particularly impressed by talks on Introducing Students to Independent Research Through Editing Wikipedia Articles on English Villages by Humphrey Southall and Safe use of Wikipedia in the transition from school to University by Lisa Anderson & Nancy Graham.
But what else is happening in the sector? I have to admit to a personal interest in this question as, as described on the Wikimedia UK blog, on 23 March I will be giving a talk at the EduWiki Serbia 2014 conference on educational use of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia tools in the UK. I would like to include further examples of work taking place which I am unaware of. If you are working in this area I would love to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment on this post or get in touch. Thanks.
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UK Web Focus (Brian Kelly) 
Dominik Lukes (@techczech) said
Thanks for the update. I’ve long advocated for academics to gather around editing Wikipedia areas (e.g. British educational philosophy – seeing this makes me wince http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Stenhouse). But I wish more sectors would start thinking about Wikipedia as a way of engaging with open content. For instance, charities and community organisations should sponsor editathons about specialist and local issues. For instance, about history of individual charities, profiles of founders and others, descriptions of issues. There are still so many imbalances of interest in Wikipedia’s coverage of the world. But so many of the institutions and people involved (including me) are too busy doing the same old things (building websites and writing books) that they don’t spend the time to make sure there is comprehensive public record of things that matter. This could be so great for engagement with their communities.
paul martin said
Good. Wikipedia has such a bad reputation among “academics” and as a result students ….
Open Education and Wikipedia: Developments in the UK « UK Web Focus said
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