Q-SORT kick-off meeting Science and Wikimedia Q-SORT kick-off meeting October 2nd 2017 Giuseppe Profiti Wikimedia Italia presentarsi

Outline Wikipedia and Wikimedia History 5 pillars of Wikipedia Reliability Sources Neutral point of view Peer review Science and Wikipedia

Outline Wikipedia and Wikimedia History 5 pillars of Wikipedia Reliability Sources Neutral point of view Peer review Science and Wikipedia

Enciclopedie tradizionali: limitate dallo spazio, ferme nel tempo CC-BY-SA 3.0 by Codex (Wikimedia Commons)

History: the ancestor Created in 2000 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger “Free content” Expert editors Peer review

History: Wikipedia In 2001 Wikipedia is launched Everybody can contribute Wiki refers to the editing software, allowing distributed writing

History: Wikipedia in 2002

History: how the two encyclopedias fared In 1 year: Nupedia has 12 articles Wikipedia reaches 20.000 articles 2003: Nupedia is closed Wikipedia today: in English, over 5 milion articles in Italian, over 1 milion articles

Wikipedia and Wikimedia Wikimedia Foundation Based in San Francisco Collects donations Develops the software and runs the infrastructure Wikimedia chapters Affiliated organizations, officially recognized Run events and promote free and open culture Example: Wikimedia Italy Wikipedian in Residence in Museums Wiki Loves Monuments photographic contest

Outline Wikipedia and Wikimedia History 5 pillars of Wikipedia Reliability Sources Neutral point of view Peer review Science and Wikipedia

5 pillars of Wikipedia Wikipedia is an encyclopedia Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute Wikipedia's editors should treat each other with respect and civility Wikipedia has no firm rules

Outline Wikipedia and Wikimedia History 5 pillars of Wikipedia Reliability Sources Neutral point of view Peer review Science and Wikipedia

Sources for statements Not acceptable: “as everybody knows” Source: where does the information come from?(book, journal, website, etc.) References: for each statement

Outline Wikipedia and Wikimedia History 5 pillars of Wikipedia Reliability Sources Neutral point of view Peer review Science and Wikipedia

Neutral point of view and completeness “Case” Philip Roth Edits by advertising agencies and governments Completeness Example: on the MPR vaccine, one section about the Wakefield case, so the reader can access sources about it

Outline Wikipedia and Wikimedia History 5 pillars of Wikipedia Reliability Sources Neutral point of view Peer review Science and Wikipedia

Peer review “Everybody can edit, then it is not reliable” Everybody can fix mistakes Sources and text can be compared Edit history helps “Amateurs can edit experts’ text” Both need to provide sources supporting the text Il primo è un esempio di slippery slope Il secondo è un appello all'autorità, come se i grandi saggisti non avessero editor per i tomi che pubblicano. No true scotsman: “non è esperto” “non è esperto in quel settore” ecc ecc Manca “è piena di cultura pop e poca scienza”

Reliability Pharmacology articles get 99.7% accuracy, compared to university textbooks Kräenbring, J., et al, 2014. “Accuracy and Completeness of Drug Information in Wikipedia: A Comparison with Standard Textbooks of Pharmacology”. PLoS One 9. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0106930 Articles on controversial topics are edited often Wilson, A.M., Likens, G.E., 2015. “Content Volatility of Scientific Topics in Wikipedia: A Cautionary Tale”. PLoS One 10, e0134454. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0134454

Outline Wikipedia and Wikimedia History 5 pillars of Wikipedia Reliability Sources Neutral point of view Peer review Science and Wikipedia

Academy and Wikipedia Among first results for 70% of search results for queries including keywords about health and diseases Laurent, Michaël R., and Tim J. Vickers. "Seeking health information online: does Wikipedia matter?." Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 16.4 (2009): 471-479. Most checked resource in medical field Heilman, James M., and Andrew G. West. "Wikipedia and medicine: quantifying readership, editors, and the significance of natural language." Journal of medical Internet research 17.3 (2015): e62. It is used a information source by 50 to 70% of medical doctors in Canada Heilman, James M., et al. "Wikipedia: a key tool for global public health promotion." Journal of medical Internet research 13.1 (2011): e14

Academy and Wikipedia /2 PFAM imports and exports data to it Subject in at least 6234 papers http://wikipapers.referata.com Useful to increase students’ writing skills Azzam, Amin et al. “Why Medical Schools Should Embrace Wikipedia: Final- Year Medical Student Contributions to Wikipedia Articles for Academic Credit at One School.” Academic Medicine 92.2 (2017): 194–200. PMC. Web. 10 Apr. 2017. International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) runs edit-a-thons at their annual meeting PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS Genetics have “Topic pages”

Academy and Wikipedia /3 Wikipedia may shape the language of science Thompson, Neil and Hanley, Douglas, Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial (September 19, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3039505 Nature News doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22656 Not only articles Wikimedia Commons hosts pictures Useful for reaching out to the wide public Wikidata hosts linked information Wikiversity and Wikibooks host courses and manuals

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC-BY-SA

Questions? Giuseppe Profiti giuseppe.profiti@wikimedia.it Thank you! Questions? Giuseppe Profiti giuseppe.profiti@wikimedia.it