Reading Wikipedia:an unconventional

approach to information

Andrew Gray(former) Wikipedian in Residence, British Library

JIBS, July 2014

what I did on my holiday…

• AHRC-funded one-year “Wikipedian in Residence at the British Library”

• Residencies previously often with galleries/ museums, focusing on collections/objects

• But libraries (generally) place less emphasis on “object” collections

a different tack

• Alongside content program, created a “skills program”

• Workshops looked at how to create Wikipedia articles – but also how to engage with the project as a reader, or a researcher

• ~400 people over dozens of sessions across the country

the project

• A collaboratively-written encyclopedia

• A synthesis of published material

• Aiming for neutrality and verifiability ...not editorial authority

• Free to use, distribute and reuse

the numbers

• Thirteen years old

• 30,000,000 articles in 280 languages

• Growing by 8-10,000 new articles/day

• Reaching 500,000,000 readers/month...or 7% of the world’s population

the problem

“We have a problem. The kids these days are reading too many encyclopedias.”

the opportunity

• Users are actively seeking out the resource• “Don’t do that!” is never very effective

• This is a perfect teaching moment– how to tell the good from the bad?– thinking critically about online material– engaging with the means of production– what are we actually saying “don’t” to?

some thoughts

• On average... quality is acceptable• 2005 study: four errors in WP for three in Britannica• 2011 study (in English, Spanish, Arabic):

“…the Wikipedia articles in this sample scored higher overall than the comparison articles with respect to accuracy, references, style/ readability and overall judgment…”

• But millions of articles = millions of problems• Radically transparent editorial process• Signs are there for alert readers

looking for the hints

Article tags

Talk pages and histories

Corner icons - locked (a red flag) - quality ratings (positive)

...and, most basic of all, style

the springboard

• Wikipedia material is (aspirationally) heavily cited

• Reader can move past single sources

• Challenge is to highlight and encourage this capability

moving onwards

Footnotes

Internal navigation

turning it around• Wikipedia Education Program– Encouraging teachers to engage with WP– Content creation, critical assessment, etc.

• Online courses– “Writing Wikipedia” MOOC (now fourth round)

• Outreach resources– Wide range of past projects for different audiences– Some printed/printable material available

some reading

• Head & Eisenberg (2010): survey of the ways students use Wikipedia as a resource

• Sormuen & Lehtiö (2011): students wrote Wikipedia articles, which were examined to study their citing/plagarising habits

• Konieczny (2012): survey of five years of teaching using Wikipedia in various ways

• Roth, Davis & Carver (2013): examination of student engagement with Wikipedia-related teaching projects

Contact details

Andrew Gray, British Antarctic Survey (late British Library)

Email: anday@bas.ac.uk Twitter: @generalising

Credit where it's due: this discussion draws heavily on a workshop Nancy Graham (Roehampton) and I ran at the LILAC conference in April 2014