improving the troubled relationship between scientists and wikipedia
TRANSCRIPT
Improving the troubled relationship between Scientists & Wikipedia
Duncan Hull @dullhunkUniversity of Manchester
& John Byrne User:JohnbodWikipedian in Residence
Royal Society & CRUKWikipedia Science Conference @WellcomeTrust
London 2nd & 3rd September 2015
Wikipedia doesn’t love scientists…Wikipedia Scientists
Wikipedia doesn’t love scientists…Wikipedia Scientists
Wikipedia has NOTHING to say about many notable Scientists
“Mutual Ignorance”Wikipedia Scientists
Wikipedia has NOTHING to say about many notable Scientists
“I use Wikipedia, but I’m unlikely to
edit it”
The “distorted mirror of Wikipedia”…
The “distorted mirror of Wikipedia”…
“Wikipedia failed in covering notable scholars properly ... might be producing an inaccurate image
of academics on the front end of science.”
Samoilenko & Yasseri (2014) Quantitative analysis of Wikipedia coverage, EPJ Data Science http://doi.org/66r via the Oxford Internet Institute (OII)
…typically lack very basic information1. Education? no X2. Research? nada X3. Career? nope X4. Funding? E.g. orcid.org non X5. Publications? [Citation-needed] doi.org naw X6. Collaborators, PhD students & postdocs? nein
X7. Pictures? (CC-BY / CC-BY-SA license) null X
If wiki-biographies exist…
Credit: Randall Munroe https://xkcd.com/773/
Universities typically don’t provide this information…
https://xkcd.com/773/
Universities typically don’t provide this information…
(if you are lucky)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1487
“Everything you ever wanted to know about your Professor from ten years ago” –Jorge Cham
…Academic homepages don’t either…
Wikipedia loves celebrities…
e.g. every tiny detail of Beckham’s life is
documented at http://enwp.org/David_Beckham
yet it has nothing to say about equivalent
scientists
Many notable scientists are Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS)
Darwin Newton Turing Hodgkin Einstein
Hawking Berners-Lee Geim Ramakrishnan Blackburn
Many notable scientists are Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS)
Darwin Newton Turing Hodgkin Einstein
Hawking Berners-Lee Geim Ramakrishnan Blackburn
approx:50 new Fellows / year for 350 years8000 Fellows (since 1660)1400 Living (FRS)160 Foreign (ForMemRS)160 Women280 Nobels ( )
“Recognise, promote and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity”
“… every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge”
Note significant overlap
Results: Edit-a-thons
Results: Edit-a-thons
• 3 public edit-a-thons, focused on diversity particularly Women in Wikipedia
• Internal training sessions ran at the Royal Society http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Royal_Society
• Ongoing relationship and understanding between Royal Society and Wikipedia editors
Results: Data published• 118 high quality, high-resolution portraits
published CC-BY-SA (2014 & 2015)• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_released_b
y_the_Royal_Society
• Biographical data published at http://www.royalsociety.org released CC-BY-SA allowing easier re-use on Wikipedia and elsewhere
• Journal subscription offer renewed & extended to 75 subscriptions http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:Royal_Society_Journals
Results: FRS coverage
100% of Female Fellows and FRS from 2014/5 have wiki-biographes
On average, 30% of 1000 fellows elected in last 20 years have no wiki-biography at all (300 total)
Results: Impact• Images (e.g. in 22 different
languageshttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Professor_Martin_Hairer_FRS.jpg )
• Data widely re-used and highly visible & accessible
Results: Impact
Data from1. http://stats.grok.se/ 2. https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/baglama2/3. https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/09/11/new-images-released-are-quickly-put-to-use/
• Images: about 40k page views a month, biggest spike 100k views (due to Fields Medal)• Biography pages: ~1k page views per month (for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki )
via Google’s Knowledge Graph using data from Wikipedia
Wiki-biographies rank highly in search results, often top result or on the first page
Where next?• We need more scientist editors to help…
– Better reflect Scientists (and Science) in Wikipedia– Create new biographies that don’t exist yet– Improve existing biographies
• Maybe if Wikipedia loved scientist a bit more, they might be more inclined to edit it?
• More pictures available under CC-BY license e.g.– royalsociety.org/library/collections – https://pictures.royalsociety.org
• More learned societies (and funding bodies) to employ wikipedians in residence
Where next?
Wikipedians in residence at European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), Academy of Medical Sciences, Royal Academy of Engineering, Zoological Society of London, Institute of Physics, Linnean Society, IET, Royal Astronomical Society, Royal Society of Biology… etc
web wiki-loves-scientists.org.uk twitter @wikiscientists
• Wikipedia pages (and data) are used by thousands of people (and machines) around the globe: 26 million page views per hour*
• Entertaining to edit biographiesof scientists you don’t know personally for Neutral Point of View (NPOV)
• Might encourage more scientist editors?*According to https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/The_next_million_articles_in_Wikipedia
Acknowledgements
• Paul Nurse @TheCrick, Francis Bacon, Emma Tennant, David Silverthorne, Aosaf Afzal @RoyalSociety
• Martin Poulter, University of Bristol @mlpoulter
• Wikimedia UK @WikimediaUK• All the contributors to wiki-biographies (too
numerous to mention here)
Image credits• "Mad scientist transparent background" by Converted to PNG by User:Wapcaplet.Converted from PNG to SVG by User:Antilived.Background removed by User:Zzyzx11. - Image:Mad scientist.svg
(Caricature of a mad scientist drawn by User:J.J.). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mad_scientist_transparent_background.svg • "Broken heart" by Corazón.svg: User:Fibonacciderivative work: Eviatar Bach (talk) - Corazón.svg. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Broken_heart.svg • "Jorge Cham-EPFL mg 2892" by Rama - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 fr via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jorge_Cham-EPFL_mg_2892.jpg • "GodfreyKneller-IsaacNewton-1689" by Sir Godfrey Kneller - http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/art/portrait.html. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GodfreyKneller-IsaacNewton-1689.jpg • "Charles Darwin by Julia Margaret Cameron 2" by Julia Margaret Cameron - Reprinted in Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters,
edited by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1892.Scanned by User:Davepape. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Darwin_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron_2.jpg
• "Beckswimbledon" by Brian MInkoff-London Pixels - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beckswimbledon.jpg • "Albert Einstein (Nobel)" by Unknown - Official 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics photograph. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albert_Einstein_(Nobel).png • "Alan Turing Aged 16" by Unknown - http://www.turingarchive.org/viewer/?id=521&title=4. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alan_Turing_Aged_16.jpg • "Paul Nurse portrait" by Not specified in the OTRS submission - OTRS submission by Ryoko Mandeville on behalf of Paul Nurse. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_Nurse_portrait.jpg • "Dorothy Hodgkin Nobel" by Unknown - http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1964/. Via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dorothy_Hodgkin_Nobel.jpg • "Stephen Hawking.StarChild" by NASA - Original. Source (StarChild Learning Center). Directory listing.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Stephen_Hawking.StarChild.jpg • "Sir Tim Berners-Lee" by Paul Clarke - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Tim_Berners-Lee.jpg • Andre Geim "Andre Geim 2010-1" by Holger Motzkau 2010, Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons (cc-by-sa-3.0). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andre_Geim_2010-1.jpg • "Nobel Prize 2009-Press Conference KVA-08" by © Prolineserver 2010, Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons (cc-by-sa-3.0). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nobel_Prize_2009-Press_Conference_KVA-08.jpg • "Elizabeth Blackburn CHF Heritage Day 2012 Rush 001" by Chemical Heritage Foundation. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – "Elizabeth Blackburn CHF Heritage Day 2012 Rush
001" by Chemical Heritage Foundation. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_Blackburn_CHF_Heritage_Day_2012_Rush_001.JPG • "Professor Martin Hairer FRS" by Royal Society uploader - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Professor_Martin_Hairer_FRS.jpg • "WMUK Royal Society Diversity editathon 2014-03-25 05" by Chris McKenna - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMUK_Royal_Society_Diversity_editathon_2014-03-25_05.jpg • "Boys image in a distorting mirror" by Gaius Cornelius - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Boys_image_in_a_distorting_mirror.jpg • "Nobel Prize" by Photograph: JonathunderMedal: Erik Lindberg (1873-1966) - Derivative of File:NobelPrize.JPG. Via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nobel_Prize.png • "Love Heart with arrow" by Nevit Dilmen (talk) - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Love_Heart_with_arrow.svg