SLA Europe hosted an event at the National Library of Scotland on 4th March 2014, entitled “Do You Have the Facts on Wikipedia?”. The speaker was Ally Crockford, the first Wikimedian in Residence in Scotland, who works at the National Library of Scotland in a role sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation. Ally explained that she wanted to give some more information on the Wikimedia Foundation and what it does, and clear up some lingering misconceptions about Wikipedia, which is the sixth most visited website in the world. Jennie Findlay shares her thoughts on the event in this review.
Wikipedia in action
I have to admit, I had no idea what the Wikimedia Foundation was before this – if I thought about it at all, I just assumed that Wikipedia was a standalone site: in fact, it’s part of a group of sister wiki based projects, with various different focusses to their existence, such as books and quotes. Ally shared the mission statement of the Wikimedia Foundation, which is “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.” That’s a pretty impressive aim!
Ally explained that there’s often little difference between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of content and accuracy of the information on those sites, but that there’s a problem for Wikipedia users in relation to trusting the site to be accurate, particularly when Wikipedia pages themselves often flag up their own unreliability with labelling on the pages.
Ally then began to explain some of the way that Wikipedia (and its editors) work, and the rules that they’re following when they create or edit pages which help to ensure that a neutral and reliable resource is created. She explained that Wikipedia pages cannot be supported or have material sourced only from Wikipedia pages – content must come from external sites. This means that there’s more confidence in the reader that the source is reliable, and “real”.
Wikipedia has a lot of guidance and policies for editors, but as Ally admitted, it’s been written by engineers and programmers, so it’s not always in the most readable language!
Therefore, the most straightforward way to see how you can work as a Wikipedia editor is to comply with their main policies. These are:
- Avoid conflicts of interest
- Maintain a neutral point of view
- All material must be verifiable (i.e. published, third party, independent material)
- Assume good faith
- Cover notable topics
- No original research should be published on Wikipedia
She also described the “Five Pillars of Wikipedia”
- It is an encyclopedia
- It should be written from a neutral point of view
- It should be free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute
- Editors should treat each other with respect and civility
- Wikipedia does not have firm rules
Editors should comply with the policies and pillars, and by keeping them in mind they should be able to ensure that they can navigate through the technicalities of page editing and contributing more confidently.
Ally mentioned that they’re looking to develop a Scottish community of Wikipedia editors, and she was keen to encourage attendees to set up a Wikipedia account, even if we never got around to doing any editing. This was because having an account means you can more easily monitor a page for any changes by “starring” it in your account. This monitoring option could be a useful additional tool when using Wikipedia, and assessing page developments!
Ally also shared the fact that the National Library of Scotland had at one point been banned from editing Wikipedia, as their edits (despite being done with the best intentions and purely to improve information about the library) fell foul of the rules for editors, and were seen as committing vandalism and link spamming. Ooops!
Questions from the audience
There was time for some questions from the audience after Ally’s talk. There was a question about student reliance on Wikipedia, and even citing Wikipedia in their research. It was agreed that they could be more aware that Wikipedia isn’t a substitute for proper research on a topic. The questioner volunteered that they use Wikipedia for research exercises themselves, and they use this method to educate the students about appropriate use of it.
I asked about the apparent gender imbalance towards male, techie contributors, and whether this is an issue. Ally agreed that there is an acknowledged problem with a large amount of the edits currently coming from middle aged male contributors, and explained that the Wikimedia Foundation are keen to address this. The vast majority of events she’s been involved in since taking on the Wikimedian in Residence role have been focussed on encouraging female editors to get involved, and getting content relating to female achievements and activities onto Wikipedia. Ally’s been working with many libraries, including the Glasgow Women’s Library, to help get this sector better represented on Wikipedia.
Other points
In the refreshments and networking session after the event, Ally continued to answer questions from attendees on how Wikipedia works, and discuss some lesser known information about it. I joined one of the conversations going on, where Ally was discussing the problem of the lack of non-English language pages, and how this was being tackled. It was interesting to learn that the translation of pages from one language to another is being set as a task for speakers of one language learning the other language (I think this is being done by language teachers, rather than by the Wikimedia Foundation). As Wikipedia has a policy ensuring that it’s written in the most accessible and simple style of English, this helps makes it easier to translate it from one language to another. I hadn’t realised this was something that was going on, but it sounds like a really interesting (and useful on many levels) way of getting Wikipedia content into non-English languages.
It was a really interesting talk, and I may even be inspired to register myself as an editor for Wikipedia…even if it’s only to keep an eye on a few important pages!
