Thing 22: Contributing to Wikipedia
Wikimedian in Residence
The University of Edinburgh has a Wikimedian-in-Residence who works with course teams and students to encourage engagement with the Wikimedia projects to develop critical information and digital literacy skills. Our Wikimedian in Residence works with schools and colleagues to embed Wikipedia and Wikidata assignments in courses across the University. They also run regular Wikipedia editathons, open events where people come together to edit Wikipedia articles about specific topics. For example, the monthly Wikiwomen in Red editathons aim to address the gender imbalance on Wikipedia; of nearly 2 million biographies on Wikipedia less than 20% are currently about women.
Editing Wikipedia can help you to understand how information is created and contested online, develop valuable digital research and communication skills, and also enable you to contribute to the creation and dissemination of open knowledge. Articles you contribute to will be publicly accessible and will benefit the huge audience that consults Wikipedia, plugging gaps in coverage, and bringing to light hidden histories, significant figures, and important concepts and ideas.
Participating
For this Thing we’re asking you to dip a toe into the Wikipedia editing waters to see how content is added, edited, and most importantly, verified.
Back in Thing 15 you were given the option of reading up on Wikipedia: Reliable sources and Wikipedia: Verifiability, if you haven’t done so yet please do before completing the task for this section.
How to complete Thing 22
Step 1
Watch the videos below and complete the activities outlined in each video:
- How to create an account on Wikipedia,
- How to enable the visual editor on Wikipedia
- How to add a citation on Wikipedia
Step 2
Watch the video Wikipedia #1Lib1Ref campaign created by Wikimedian in Residence, Ewan McAndrew. Then use the Citation Hunt tool to find an article in need of citation. You can filter the citation hunt tool for topics that you are interested in or know where you can find good sources. Find a Reliable source and then add it to the article!
Reflect in a blog post on your experience of participating in adding information to Wikipedia.
Further Resources
Hannah Rothmann put together useful how to and tutorial videos into a How to edit Wikipedia playlist.
Watch this video from Wikimedia UK and learn about efforts to Close the Gender Gap on Wikipedia.
Listen.hatnote.com – Listen to the (zen) sound of Wikipedia’s recent changes feed. Bells indicate additions, and string plucks indicate subtractions. Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note. Green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots.
Thing 23: Reflection
As we wrap up with the last of our 23 Things, for this Thing your final task is to set aside some time to write up a reflection of all the things you’ve explored and learned about throughout this course.
‘Reflection is the conscious examination of past experiences, thoughts and ways of doing things. Its goal is to surface learning about oneself and the situation, and to bring meaning to it to inform the present and the future. It challenges the status quo of practice, thoughts and assumptions and may therefore inform our decisions, actions, attitudes, beliefs and understanding about ourselves’
Reflection is seen as core to professional practice in a range of vocational and non-vocational disciplines, and hopefully you’ve been developing good reflection practice while working your way through this course.
For your final reflection we’d like to hear your thoughts on what you feel you have gained, learned, explored, and discovered throughout the course:
- Were there Things that you particularly enjoyed?
- Was there a Thing has either had something in it that surprised you?
- Have you been reading the community blogs?
- How did you find the blogging aspect of the course?
- Did you have any difficulties completing the Things?
- If you wrote a blog post at the beginning on what you hoped to gain out of the 23 Things course, looking back on the post do you feel you achieved those goals?
Most of all we hope you have enjoyed the journey and that we have been able to provide you with a sense of adventure and exploration of digital tools and knowledge.
Thank you for participating!
Are you a 23 Things Winner?
If you have blogged about all 23 Things for Digital Knowledge and would like to receive an Open Badge to prove as a record of your completing this course, please complete and submit the form below.
On verifying your blog posts we will add you to our Winners list and award you with the 23 Things Open Badge.
Well done!
