#sciencescribe Scientists and Wikipedia at #scio12

Illustrated by Anthony Salvagno (me!) and session hosted by Dario Taraborelli and Greta Munger.

This was a super interesting session. It was so interesting that I had to stop scribing so I could get involved in the conversation. The bulk of the conversation discussed how to get others involved in collaborating on Wikipedia.

Many people are afraid to contribute and the interesting thing is that, their fears are kinda justified as the moderators on Wikipedia can be kinda harsh when it comes to accepting edits. Not only this, but the people who should contribute (leaders in the field) frequently don’t and it’s obvious the world could greatly benefit from their contributions. The moderators described keys to getting over this barrier and presented an interesting case study: a class assignment that involved creating articles on Wikipedia!

Some of those principles from that case study I’m actually applying in my own lab this semester, but more geared towards open notebook science (instead of creating wikipedia content). The goal is the same though, to get the students used to contributing to collective knowledge and to encourage them to communicate with their community (each other).