Submissions/Possible strategies of increasing involvement of scientists and academics in Wikimedia projects

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Info

This is an Open submission for Wikimania 2017 that has not yet been reviewed by a member of the Programme Committee.

Submission no. 6032 - E2
Title of the submission

Possible strategies of increasing involvement of scientists and academics in Wikimedia projects

Type of submission (lecture, panel, tutorial/workshop, roundtable discussion, lightning talk, poster, birds of a feather discussion)

lightning talk

Author of the submission

Helixitta

type of submission

lightning talk

Language of presentation

English

E-mail address

helixitta@yahoo.com

Username

Helixitta

Country of origin

Ukraine

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Personal homepage or blog
Abstract (up to 300 words to describe your proposal)

Scientists and academics write articles in peer revived journals that are similar in structure to Wikipedia articles, they have access to equipment that can create diagrams and other illustrations in the field of science and academics have great influence on younger students that attend their lectures. Thus, scientist could contribute to Wikimedia projects not only by means of writing Wikipedia articles on scientific subjects but also as the authors of illustrative materials for the articles, as juries in Wikimedia scientific competitions etc.

However, scientists often have certain negative predisposition towards Wikimedia involvement based on the beliefs that Wikipedia articles are of low quality and that the process of editing is unorganized and overall chaotic with no possible ways of filtering out vandalisms or unbiased/wrong information. Moreover, scientists usually react negatively to possible questioning of their authority by unknown, anonymous users, which undoubtedly arises when a scientist becomes a wikipedian, who has as many, or as little rights as other wikipedians, who are not experts on the subject at hand.

The aim of this talk is to highlight the need for active Wikipedians to reach out to scientists and academics, to persuade them to contribute to Wikimedia. The presentation will name possible ways of dispelling negative prejudice researchers have against active involvement and will list all the other possible ways to encourage a scientist into becoming Wikimedia project editor. Materials used for this presentation would be the following: data gathered during European Science photo competition 2015/ Science photo competition 2016, several wikiworkshops for scientist and medical researchers at a scientific institution and a medical college, and individual interviews with scientists, both active Wikipedia contributors as well as the ones not involved in Wikimedia movement.

What will attendees take away from this session?

a way to talk to scientists in order to engage them in Wikimedia movement

Theme of presentation
  • Education
For workshops and discussions, what level is the intended audience?

all users

Length of session (if other than 25 minutes, specify how long)

25 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

yes

Slides

File:Possible strategies of increasing involvement of scientists and academics in Wikimedia projects.pdf

Notes

Submissions/Possible_strategies_of_increasing_involvement_of_scientists_and_academics_in_Wikimedia_projects/notes

Interested attendees

  1. Anne Delong (talk) 23:11, 20 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Librarygurl (talk) 22:01, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Slowking4 (talk)
  4. Rhododendrites (talk) 13:38, 30 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  5. I plan to submit a series of sessions that zoom in on specific aspects of this, so I would certainly like to see this session expanded beyond a lightning talk, or combined with related proposals. Daniel Mietchen (talk) 03:42, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Amir É. Aharoni (talk) 10:09, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Masssly (talk) 07:03, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Ocaasi (WMF) (talk) 15:58, 12 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Mardetanha (talk) 21:01, 27 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Hogne (talk) 18:06, 11 August 2017 (UTC). I see you have slides, could you consider upload and link them here, please?[reply]
    sure, no problem, the link is added --Helixitta (talk) 21:15, 11 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]