Wiki Scholars courses like Elections and Campaigning in the United States, Women and Politics in the US, and State Politics and Policy have brought together subject matter experts to learn to edit Wikipedia, tackling misinformation and filling in the content gaps on election-related content. 

Course participants improved the encyclopedia’s coverage of electoral processes, proposed local laws, US political parties, voting behavior and participation, candidates for office, and other topics related to the election, making an incredible impact on the public’s understanding of these topics. Their work on Wikipedia has been viewed nearly 28 million times!

For Libby Newman, associate professor and chair of the Department of Government, Politics and Law at Rider University, the professional development course also offered an opportunity to better understand the editing process on Wikipedia.

“I came away with much more confidence in Wikipedia as a source, and I feel empowered to add content myself now, too,” said Newman.

From candidate biographies and historical events to voter access and voting behavior, participants contributed to a diverse range of topics to create new, neutral content to help inform voting decisions. 

Particularly interested in voter access, one participant created several new Wikipedia articles including Homeless vote in United States, United States non-resident eligible voters, and Pitt v. Black, a 1984 legal case that established that Americans living in non-conventional accommodations cannot be refused the right to register to vote.

“My community service with homeless people sparked the interest in creating an article about the homeless vote in the United States, which consequently led to the creation of the Pitts v. Black article, a landmark case that allowed Americans to cast their ballot even if they reside on a park bench,” explained the participant.

This editor also enhanced articles like Voter registration in the United States, Absentee ballot, and Election law, adding more than 50 new references and nearly 4,000 words through their work on Wikipedia.

Without a doubt, Wikipedia’s role as a neutral and high-quality public knowledge source is more critical than ever during election years, providing nonpartisan information to voters as they wade through the never-ending landscape of bias and misinformation online. As course participant Dale McGowan of the Center for Election Innovation & Research shared with us, the heart of Wikipedia is democracy – the democratization of knowledge for all.

Interested in learning more about our election courses and the subject matter experts who participated? Explore their stories:

• Scholar, writer joins efforts to democratize knowledge on Wikipedia
• Connecting the past and present: Political scientist brings expertise to Wikipedia during election year

Want to learn how to add your own expertise to Wikipedia? Explore Wiki Education’s upcoming courses for subject-area experts.

Looking to empower your students by incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada. Apply by December 1, 2024 for priority consideration for spring 2025.

This summer, McGowan enrolled in an eight-week Wiki Scholars election course to bring his professional experiences and personal passion for accessible, nonpartisan information to Wikipedia. Throughout the course, he and his classmates worked to improve content related to candidates, voting behavior and participation, proposed laws, political parties, and other topics relevant to U.S. elections.

“I’ve had to develop both a knowledge base and the ability to find answers to what I don’t know so I can accurately represent the complex collision of politics, culture, and law in that sphere,” said McGowan of his work at Center for Election Innovation & Research, which helped build his confidence to edit Wikipedia articles with high readership.

When reflecting on his motivation to join the course, his answer was simple.

“Wikipedia is one of the greatest contributions to global civilization, period,” said McGowan. “A chance to develop greater skills as an editor was unmissable.”

During the course, McGowan created a new Wikipedia article for an event that had a profound effect on him years ago – the memorial event that followed the death of Minnesota U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone in a plane crash in 2002, just 11 days before he was to stand for re-election.

“That memorial, as much as the crash, changed the course of the election and impacted national politics in several ways,” said McGowan. “I was geekily delighted when the article was assessed as B-class.”

And McGowan’s editing momentum on Wikipedia only grew stronger after the final meeting of his Wiki Scholars course. 

Since the end of the course, McGowan has improved articles focused on state elections, including Mississippi, Alabama, and New Hampshire, and added several new paragraphs to the early voting article. His contributions to the article’s lead section help readers understand how early voting over the course of several days can lead to a smoother election process than when voters cast their ballots on a single day.

While at first intimidated by the prospect of changing information on articles, particularly those with millions of monthly page views, McGowan’s editing jitters have subsided over time.

“I’ve added substantial content around early voting, voter registration methods, mail voting, the Freedom of Information Act, election security, voter-verified paper ballots, and more,” said McGowan. “I’ve looked at historical page view data, and many of these pages balloon 50-200 times in views shortly before an election. It’s gratifying to get accurate and current information where people can find it.”

Editing Wikipedia has become a significant and fulfilling part of his daily work, McGowan explained. 

“For much of history, so much knowledge has been the purview of the privileged elite,” he noted. “It is terrifically rewarding to participate in the democratization of knowledge that is the heart of the Wikipedia project.”

McGowan encourages other subject matter experts to engage with Wikipedia, emphasizing the incredible reach of Wikipedia.

“Wikipedia is the most commonly-accessed source of knowledge on Earth,” explained McGowan. “It is the first result in almost every online search. There is no greater way to disseminate accurate knowledge of your field than by improving related content on Wikipedia.”

And fortunately for us all, McGowan looks forward to sharing his knowledge with Wikipedia long term.

“I’ve wondered for years how I might stay involved in the life of the mind when I retire in a few years,” said McGowan. “Now I know!”

Interested in learning how to add your own expertise to Wikipedia? Explore Wiki Education’s upcoming courses for subject-area experts.

Looking to empower your students by incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada. Apply by December 1, 2024 for priority consideration for spring 2025.

Liebell’s scholarship lies at the intersection of history, politics, law, and philosophy – areas that have sharpened her keen eye for identifying gaps in the information available to the public. 

“I had noticed things that were missing on Wikipedia, for example the article on women’s suffrage does not include important material on the contributions of women of color, but I was afraid of the practical, technical side of editing,” said Liebell, a political science professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “I really did not think it would be so easy – and that was the best part of the course.”

Expressing her gratitude to the Wiki Scholars course, Liebell now compares the simplicity of editing Wikipedia to the ease of sending a text message.

“I learned that it only takes a few minutes to add or correct something – and you don’t need to be a tech genius,” explained Liebell.

From information about Supreme Court cases to 17th century feminist thinkers, Liebell made widespread improvements to Wikipedia across a variety of political science topics, following her interests, areas of expertise, and available resources – and even tackled the example her instructor shared to underscore how some critically important articles can still need serious help: the Comstock Act of 1873 article.

“I had made a very long list of possible articles to work on, but when I saw that the Comstock article was a strange mix of long quotes and did not connect with 21st century politics, I thought it was an easy way to contribute,” said Liebell, noting her excitement to lend her expertise to the article. “I knew a lot about 19th century attitudes towards women in the law and I understood that Comstock was a ‘zombie’ law that some people hoped could criminalize abortion and birth control.”

Just as she approaches her own scholarship, Liebell’s work on Wikipedia often bridges historical context with contemporary life, a link she forged during the course to enhance relevant and critical content for U.S. voters.

“My work is very theoretical and historical – but I always try to connect what I know about the 17th and 18th century to what is happening in today’s world,” noted Liebell, who added information about relevant court cases to several articles, including Mifepristone and Bump stock. 

Throughout the course, Liebell also enhanced articles covering legislature (Married Women’s Property Acts in the United States), court cases (Garland v. Cargill), and political figures (Lilly Goren). 

“We need all types of people to add what they know about the world,” emphasized Liebell, encouraging other scholars to learn to edit Wikipedia. “I have continued to edit because people who have access to ‘behind-the-paywall’ resources need to share with those who do not. As a university professor, I have access to databases (so I can easily find a quote or a photo out of copyright) and I’ve spent almost 40 years learning to research.”

Liebell continues to draw real-world connections between her experience in the course, her ongoing work to improve election-related content on Wikipedia, and current events.

“As part of our [Wiki Scholars] class, we looked at the number of people who read articles,” said Liebell. “During the Democratic National Convention, one of the speakers mentioned Comstock (because Project 2025 recommends using Comstock to make mailing abortion related material illegal). Because of the course, I know that people will look up terms they don’t know – and it is absolutely true!”

When considering the challenges of her editing experience, Liebell noted the conflicts that can arise between editors when they disagree about exactly what content should be included in an article.

“I saw that Wikipedia is only as good as the editors and we needed more editors to be involved,” Liebell reflected. “Democracy is great until you have two people who disagree and no neutral umpire!” 

Motivated by the satisfying moments when she can leverage her expertise and resources to benefit others, Liebell continues to fight misinformation by improving Wikipedia.

“It feels very good to add specific material that is time consuming and tricky to find,” said Liebell. “For example, I read that the Comstock Act was mentioned in Project 2025 but I could not find it when I scanned the 900+ page document. Project 2024 refers to the law but never uses the term. But I read the sections on abortion and added the page reference to the Wikipedia article. That felt good!”

Liebell encourages other scholars to join her in editing Wikipedia, underscoring her hope that academic associations establish a way to credit this impactful knowledge equity work.

Interested in learning how to add your own expertise to Wikipedia? Explore Wiki Education’s upcoming courses for subject-area experts.

Looking to empower your students by incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada. Apply by December 1, 2024 for priority consideration for spring 2025.

In August, five scholars from across the country gathered virtually to share their efforts to enhance this critical access by improving election-related content on Wikipedia. Drawing from their experiences as participants of our Wiki Scholars election courses, the panelists reflected on their work to combat misinformation and bridge information gaps on Wikipedia.

The Wiki Education Speaker Series event, “Wikipedia & Politics: Improving articles for a more informed public,” brought together an audience of faculty, students, scholars, and community members from around the world. The discussion explored themes including public access and understanding of election information, the civic duty to share expertise with others, and the rewarding and challenging task of editing political content on Wikipedia.

Prior to starting his PhD at Rutgers University, panelist Anderson De Andrade taught public school. During the discussion, he drew parallels between his approach to teaching and his work on Wikipedia, including the importance of maintaining neutrality and awareness of his own biases.

“As I was going through this [course] thinking about knowledge creation itself…it’s just so complex and so tricky,” said De Andrade. “It has to be done in this kind of democratic process, where you have different people all editing the same piece to create a more fluid and more objective kind of piece.”

Panelist Muhammad Hassan Bin Afzal, visiting professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Service at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, underscored his appreciation of Wikipedia’s ability to keep up with an ever-changing political landscape.

“The beauty of Wikipedia is that it’s an iterative document,” explained Afzal. “As a researcher, it takes time to edit and publish something. I really appreciate Wikipedia – if something suddenly changes, it can be very difficult for academic journals to update and inform the public accurately, but Wikipedia has more scope to fill that gap.”

Panelist Tasha Bergson-Michelson, instructional and programming librarian for Castilleja School, stressed the power of Wikipedia as a constructor of authority, particularly in topics of critical social importance like election content.

“[Wikipedia] creates authority for people who should have it and aren’t necessarily granted it,” said Bergson-Michelson. “And I think we grow in ourselves when we edit and learn about new parts of the world we don’t know about, new people we don’t know about.”

Hillel Gray, recently retired from Miami University of Ohio, also highlighted the opportunities for both personal and professional growth when editing Wikipedia.

“You learn a lot about yourself,” said Gray. “You can be an introvert in certain respects, and then you can find yourself in Wikipedia feeling freeform.”

Both Gray and Bergson-Michelson emphasized the public impact scholars can make by bringing information out from behind paywalls to share with all through Wikipedia.

“We have access to really high-quality sources and all sorts of knowledge,” said Gray, noting the breadth of research and academic publications available through institutional credentials. “Just putting these sources into Wikipedia will start to improve the media literacy of people who visit Wikipedia.”

While each panelist shared several key takeaways from their experience improving election-related content on Wikipedia, Yao Yao of the University of Georgia offered one simple yet impactful piece of advice:

“Don’t be afraid of editing Wikipedia,” said Yao. “Everyone can contribute their knowledge and expertise, or even simply update an article when there’s new data, and everyone will benefit.”

Catch up on our Speaker Series on YouTube, including “Wikipedia & Politics: Improving articles for a more informed public,” and join us for our next program this Wednesday: 

Wikipedia & Social Justice: How students are enhancing representation and equity

Wednesday, September 25 at 10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern

REGISTER NOW

Interested in learning how to add your own expertise to Wikipedia? Explore Wiki Education’s upcoming courses for subject-area experts.

“It feels like where theory means practice in a really powerful way for students,” said panelist Dean Allbritton, who teaches with the Wikipedia assignment at Colby College. “[My students] are saying, I’m not just researching or understanding the plight or the lives of LGBTQ people throughout the world, but I’m actually making the invisible feel visible in a way that they feel personally and ethically edified by. And it’s just beautiful.”

The associate professor of Spanish enjoys the pivotal moment where the assignment “clicks” for his students – at the beginning, students often tell Allbritton that they’ve been taught to mistrust information on Wikipedia, but when they understand the need to cite all added content, their perceptions change.

“I just love that moment of discovery for them of what Wikipedia can do, and what it can offer particularly to groups that have been underrepresented throughout history,” emphasized Allbritton, reflecting on the Wikipedia assignment’s role in his course “Queer Spain”. “They learn a different, fact-based style of writing, research skills…and all of this is available through the Wiki Education program, which is incredible.”

Panelist Juana Maria Rodriguez, professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, echoed Allbritton’s experience in empowering students to add LGBTQ+ content to Wikipedia as part of their coursework. Students quickly realize they are writing for a global audience and can’t simply jump to analysis without substantive research to support their edits, she explained. 

“It actually gives [my students] a sense of the incredible resources they have,” said Rodriguez, noting their access to information held behind paywalls. “That sense of reaching out, speaking to the world, is really impactful for them. Some have taken that extra step to translate pages, coming from their own desire to make this information more widely available.”

The panel also featured the perspective of historian Dan Royles, who traded his usual role of professor to become a student himself in a 2022 Wiki Scholars course focused on enhancing LGBTQ+ histories and content on Wikipedia. 

Drawing from his deep expertise and research for his book To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle for HIV/AIDS, Royles completely transformed the Wikipedia article on American AIDS activist Reggie Williams, expanding the brief text by adding nearly 3,000 words and 20 references.

Royles explained that just like students, he developed an appreciation for the rigor required to significantly improve a Wikipedia article. As part of his edits to Williams’ article, Royles added the names of William’s notable collaborators to encourage future additions on Wikipedia of their own impactful histories.

“The kind of iterative nature of Wikipedia, where our work is the groundwork for the work other people do later, is really valuable,” said Royles.

Margaret Galvan, Speaker Series panelist and assistant professor of Visual Rhetoric at the University of Florida, has taught with Wikipedia for several years, primarily in her course “Queer Comics”. 

“Wiki Education’s platform makes it really easy to teach with Wikipedia,” said Galvan. “They have modules where students learn about Wikipedia throughout the semester that you can adapt to your course.”

Galvan encouraged fellow faculty to teach with Wikipedia, underscoring the opportunity to engage students in critical discussions on topics including the idea of notability, particularly when editing content about underrepresented people or subjects. 

Catch up on our Speaker Series on YouTube, including “Who is preserving LGBTQ+ history?”, and explore recaps of our most recent programs on our blog:

• Wikipedia and education, globally 
• Wikipedia can shape the world, not just reflect it

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education provides to instructors in the United States and Canada.

Today, the US Supreme Court unanimously rejected a challenge to the abortion pill mifepristone, ensuring continued patient access to the drug by mail. Thanks in part to the work of Wiki Scholars course editors, the Wikipedia article on mifepristone is ready to inform the coming thousands of readers looking for additional context on the drug and the SCOTUS decision.

It’s no surprise that when news breaks, people turn to Wikipedia not only to understand key topics but also to make more informed decisions. With billions of views each month, the world’s largest encyclopedia covers nearly every subject imaginable, including healthcare content used by patients, policymakers, and healthcare practitioners alike.

When Justice Matthew Kacsmaryk of the district court for the Northern District of Texas temporarily suspended the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone in April 2023, the readership of the mifepristone article skyrocketed as people sought related information.

The judge’s decision relied heavily on two studies published in the journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology, which found that the drug could harm pregnant women who took it.

Although the papers have since been retracted by the journal due to unreported conflicts of interest on the part of their primary author and methodological concerns, and the US Supreme Court rejected the case (on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue), this case illustrates how individual studies, when taken out of the context of a whole body of knowledge, can create a completely misleading impression of the state of the field.

Cherry-picked sources are often used by activists to support their specific goals, but on Wikipedia, medical content is subject to special sourcing rules that strongly recommend relying on review articles published in the past five years. A properly-referenced Wikipedia article would never rely on a pair of studies that are, at best, outliers. These rules help ensure that Wikipedia articles reflect current understandings of medical topics.

But even with the best of intentions, Wikipedia articles can be out of date, and non-specialists may not know the current state of the literature well enough to catch error misstatements (either intentional or unintentional), which is why bringing subject matter experts to Wikipedia can be incredibly impactful.

In 2019, 2020, and most recently this spring, Wiki Education partnered with the Society of Family Planning to run a series of Wiki Scholar courses where expert members of the society improved Wikipedia articles related to women’s health, including the mifepristone article. In the recent course, an editor added a section on the use of the drug to medically manage early pregnancy loss, while two members of the 2020 cohort also made several small improvements. But it was a participant in a 2019 course who made larger – and more important – changes to the article. 

This editor, who went by the username UCDEBS, separated the existing safety information in the article into a section on side effects. Crucially, for the sake of context, they were able to add information about how rarely serious complications occurred (only 0.04–0.09% of people using the drug had complications serious enough to require hospitalization) and added more information about the duration of side effects. In addition, they added important information about contraindications. 

Ideally, people would get this type of information from their healthcare provider, but when access to abortion care is severely limited, women may need access to these medications under less than ideal conditions, making the availability of high-quality information online even more important.

Since the editor’s enhancements in 2019, the mifepristone article has been viewed nearly 1.5 million times, including the spike in readership following the April 2023 ruling in Texas. 

And today, as readers explore the Wikipedia article seeking answers to questions about mifepristone, the impact of the information will soar once again.

Interested in learning how to add your own expertise to Wikipedia? Explore Wiki Education’s upcoming courses for subject-area experts.

“I find immense satisfaction in knowing that I am improving an article with accurate and current scholarship,” said Dimitrova, an expert in late medieval and early Renaissance tapestries at the University of San Diego. “In many ways, serving as a Wikipedia editor is like being a super publisher – I can make significant changes instantaneously to a range of subjects and topics for which I have subject expertise – making measurable and meaningful content.”

For Dimitrova, the professional development course designed for pre-modern European art experts was a chance to connect with a new network of scholars, professors, museum curators, and librarians, and to engage with scholarship in a new, incredibly impactful way.

“I truly think that editing on Wikipedia (either editing a current article or creating a new article) is a form of public scholarship that has far-reaching influence, particularly to readers who are outside the walls of academia,” said Dimitrova. “Although I have published a co-edited volume in the field of medieval art history, my contributions to Wikipedia have the potential to make an even greater educational and scholarly impact, in part because the audience is larger and I can also create content on a relatively short timeline.”

Dimitrova’s assessment of Wikipedia’s scholarly impact is supported by research, including studies shared by recent Wiki Education Speaker Series panelist Neil Thompson which highlight how the site can influence the content in academic publications.  

To get started on Wikipedia, Dimitrova explored Stub-class to C-class articles from geographic regions that intersected with her research and teaching interests: Flanders, France, Spain, and Italy. As she began to edit the article on the Pastrana Tapestries, she quickly found herself “tumbling down a rabbit hole”, exploring other linked pages including one featuring 15th century leading tapestry dealer Pasquier Grenier, a name Dimitrova has repeatedly encountered throughout her three decades of research.

“I was dismayed by the sheer lack of sources and inaccurate information about him,” said Dimitrova, who changed course to enhance Grenier’s Wikipedia article. “I learned a lot of intriguing facts about him during my deep dive: he was a dealer not just in tapestries, but also in wine! Who knew!?”

Just as a hyperlinked page brought her to working on Grenier’s article, linked pages within the tapestry dealer’s article led her to editing other related articles, where she took pleasure in providing valuable and precise descriptions of works of art within her areas of expertise.

Although she has now completed her Wiki Scholars course, Dimitrova continues to work in her sandbox and edit on Wikipedia today, emphasizing its crucial role as a source of free, open access knowledge and underscoring the importance of Wiki Education trainings like Wiki Scholars courses and the Wikipedia Student Program for changing misperceptions of Wikipedia in academia.

“Academia’s long-propagated mistrust of Wikipedia as a viable academic source continues and students are still often advised not to use it,” Dimitrova explained. “However, I think that as more and more scholars and students alike become trained editors, they typically realize that Wikipedia’s system of ‘checks and balances’ is quite rigorous.”

Dimitrova expressed deep gratitude for Wiki Education’s Will Kent for his impactful instruction of the course, as well as for the course sponsor, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, highlighting its vital support of pre-modern European art scholars as they work to contribute to the field.

For refugee resettlement expert Shyam Krishnan Sriram, participating in the panel, “Being a MPSA Wiki Scholar: Sharing Political Expertise on Wikipedia,”  was an opportunity to break from his typical engagement with the conference.

“The MPSA is an important conference and I have attended a dozen times in the last two decades,” said Sriram, assistant professor of political science at Canisius University. “When it was suggested to come together as a panel, I jumped at the chance because this professional development side of the conference is important to me – not just presenting original research.” 

Reflecting on their experience as participants of a recent Wiki Scholars course, each of the four scholars noted the importance of editing Wikipedia as a strategy to combat misinformation, particularly during the 2024 election year. Panelists also initiated conversations about the role Wikipedia can play in disseminating research, its relationship with artificial intelligence and large language models, and the challenges of biases against Wikipedia. 

“We agreed during the panel that the number one challenge was a vast amount of misinformation about Wikipedia and its legitimacy as an academic source,” noted Sriram. “We still have a lot of work to do!”

Panelist and doctoral student at the University of Georgia Yao Yao agreed, underscoring the importance of educating academics and students on the immeasurable value of Wikipedia.

“As a PhD student, I believe it’s crucial to challenge the notion that students should be discouraged from using Wikipedia,” said Yao, an American politics scholar. “Instead, we should educate them on how to leverage its benefits effectively.”

From her first day in the Wiki Scholars course, Yao was drawn to the “inclusive and collaborative nature” of the Wikipedia community, embracing the chance to question her assumptions, gain practical skills in content creation, and join the worldwide group of editors dedicated to sharing knowledge. 

“One aspect of the course that particularly resonated with me was its emphasis on overcoming bias and fostering confidence in editing Wikipedia,” said Yao. “I also appreciated the opportunity to learn the intricacies of article editing, even though some processes seemed complex initially. The course provided valuable guidance on editing various elements such as images and charts, which has expanded my skill set and deepened my understanding of content creation on Wikipedia.”

An idea championed by panelist Muhammad Hassan Bin Afzal, visiting professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Service at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, the group plans to collaborate on a writing project which will examine the topics they discussed at the conference.

“The participants were so fun, engaged, and curious, and we’re even in talks about developing a paper for publication,” said panel chair Jacqueline M. Keil, assistant professor of political science at Kean University.

Wiki Education staff also engaged with all MPSA conference attendees from our booth in the exhibition hall. Both Kent and Wiki Education’s Communications and Outreach Coordinator Colleen McCoy connected with political science experts from across the globe, sharing information about our upcoming Wiki Scholars & Scientists professional development courses and the opportunity to teach with Wikipedia in our Wikipedia Student Program.

To find her starting point, Allison assembled a comprehensive list of works in the museum’s collection that related to the course themes and then explored Wikipedia to discover which of the works were already featured as articles. Her search led to the Wikipedia article about “The Jewish Cemetery”, a 17th century oil painting by the Dutch artist Jacob van Ruisdael.

“I came across the article for the Jewish Cemetery and noticed that some of the information, especially around provenance, was not accurate or as clearly described as what we had in our database,” said Allison, Collections Database Manager. “I wanted to check the sources and make sure we could update the article to share a clearer timeline of how the painting made its way into our collection.”

Allison did just that and more, tackling the project head-on. During her participation in the Wiki Scholars course, she added nearly 3,500 words and 36 references to the article, completely transforming several existing sections and adding a new section featuring the exhibition history of the painting.

Allison, along with her colleagues, continues to engage with and learn about Wikipedia and Wikidata to understand how to make accurate and robust information about their collections more accessible to the public. She encourages other professionals across all disciplines to lend their unique expertise, noting how the awareness of and immediate access to sources can save significant research time.

“Wikipedia can be a really great source of information for users looking to know more on certain subjects, but the articles are only as good as the sources and information that someone is able to provide,” said Allison. “Having resources and professional knowledge on a subject and being able to share it in this way helps everyone.”

When reflecting on her participation in the course, Allison noted the fun of rediscovering practices she hasn’t employed since her time as an art history student.

“My favorite part about editing Wikipedia is getting to spend some time researching and writing about works in our collection and using skills I don’t often get to utilize since finishing school,” said Allison. “It is nice to slow down and learn more about a work and be able to turn that knowledge into something accessible and easy to read for the public so that they can learn more about the work as well, and maybe they’ll decide to come check out the collection in person.”

Funded by Samuel H. Kress Foundation and led by Wiki Education in fall 2023, the 10-week Art History Wiki Scholars course focused on training scholars in pre-modern European art and architecture how to add their expertise to this underdeveloped subject area on Wikipedia. The collective contributions of Allison and the other 19 course participants have been viewed on Wikipedia nearly 3 million times.