Motivated by her lifelong interest and focus on reproductive health and justice, course participant Paula A. Hillard, MD valued the unique learning opportunity to bring her knowledge to the public through the open-access encyclopedia.

“I loved the encouragement and support in my ventures into editing Wikipedia,” said Hillard, a pediatric and adolescent gynecology specialist at Stanford Children’s Health and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. “In the medical field in particular, many Wikipedia articles need updating. As a physician, I know that many individuals use Wikipedia as one of their online sources of medical information, so the articles must be medically accurate as well as inclusive.”

While previously unfamiliar with the WITH Foundation, Hillard immediately connected with the goals of the organization and eagerly jumped into editing.

“When I read what the [WITH] acronym stands for, ‘Working for Inclusive and Transformative Healthcare’, I was hooked, and wanted the chance to help further that mission,” explained Hillard.  

Fellow course participant Juanita Panlener discovered the learning opportunity through her organization’s ongoing collaboration with the WITH Foundation. As the manager of the National Resource Center of the Spina Bifida Association, Panlener provides information about living with Spina Bifida to family members, individuals, social professionals, and more.

“Once I realized the value of learning how to be a responsible contributor to Wikipedia, and once I realized that we could play a part in updating content about Spina Bifida and topics related to Spina Bifida, I was in!” Panlener emphasized. 

Course participants made high-quality improvements to a variety of Wikipedia articles focused on disability healthcare, including Down syndrome, Disability sport classification, De Barsy syndrome, Evidence-based medicine, Disability treatments in the United States, Curb cut effect, and Ableism.

Curious about the editing process and motivated by the chance to dedicate time to improving Wikipedia by researching a topic aligned with her interests, Arizona State University professor Kenicia Wright joined the course with limited prior knowledge of the site.

“I was surprised by the increase in experts contributing to information on Wikipedia, the sources that are added to support the information being uploaded on different topics, and the goal/number of academic scholars contributing to Wikipedia articles on certain topics,” said Wright.

Like Wright, many participants were surprised by the course content, including the exploration of Wikipedia’s robust editing policies and guidelines in place to safeguard article quality.

“Prior to the course, I was unaware of the extensive behind-the-scenes work involved in creating Wikipedia articles,” said Rachel Lawerh, Population Student Health PhD student at the University of Ottawa. “It was fascinating to see editors collaborating on various topics, guidelines, and measures that are put in place to minimize the spread of misinformation on the platform.”

For instructor Will Kent, Scholars & Scientists Program Manager at Wiki Education, the WITH courses provided the ideal space for experts to gather and share their deep subject-area knowledge acquired from lived experience.

“An important element to these courses is the connection between people’s personal motivations to edit articles in the area of disabilities,” said Kent. “It was especially rewarding for me as an instructor to work with new editors who brought both personal and professional experiences to their writing. In addition to being meaningful to the course participants, it’s important for people writing about the community they represent to be part of that community. This really shines through in their work.”

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

Explore related articles:

• Edits close to home: ophthalmologist lends expertise to Down syndrome article
• 800K views and counting: professor improves healthcare content on Wikipedia

But it was a personal connection to the course’s focus on adult disabilities that propelled his work on Wikipedia – and led him to make substantive additions to an already well-developed, well-regarded article on the site.

“My sister has Down syndrome and I am involved in assisting with her medical care,” said Barbera. “I was interested and motivated to share what I knew through Wikipedia.”

Barbera added a new, robust section on ocular findings to the Down syndrome article, including information related to clinical signs of Down syndrome in an infant at birth, and the greater frequency of vision disorders such as congenital cataracts, strabismus, nystagmus, nasolacrimal duct obstruction, and refractive error among individuals with Down syndrome. 

“Wikipedia is one of the best examples of the realization of the original promise of the internet – constructive collaboration and dissemination of knowledge,” explained the ophthalmologist when reflecting on the power of Wikipedia to shape awareness and understanding of topics like disabilities. 

Throughout the course, Barbera also made enhancements to other eye-related articles, including Pseudostrabismus, which could lead to the incorrect diagnosis of strabismus. Pseudostrabismus, the false impression that the eyes are misaligned, generally occurs in infants and very young children, whose facial features are not yet fully developed.

“It was quite rewarding to look at the page view statistics with [our instructor] at the end of the course,” said Barbera. “It’s amazing how many views there were of the work in just a few weeks!  It helps me understand how significant the contribution can be, and I am sure others would share that sense of satisfaction.”

Praising his WITH course and its instructor, Wiki Education’s Will Kent, Barbera underscored the quality of his learning experience, the value of Kent’s encouragement and feedback, and his thanks to the WITH Foundation for supporting healthcare for those with disabilities. 

“One of the benefits of these courses is the fact that participants have an opportunity to learn from each other,” said Kent. “User Nabor Barbera led and fostered several useful conversations about disability topics, understanding the Wikipedia community, and exploring the useful (and sometimes baffling) user interface. These kinds of conversations embody the kind of drive, agency, and curiosity that make an engaged Wikipedian.”

While his course has officially ended, Barbera continues to review and edit Wikipedia articles, encouraging others to lend their own knowledge to improve the site for all.

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

Having attended four Wiki Scientists courses over the past year, three of which were sponsored by the WITH Foundation, McEwen remains dedicated to enhancing healthcare and disability information on Wikipedia, underscoring the crucial role Wikipedia plays in increasing equity in public health.

“Quality information is important to patients and families,” said McEwen. “Wikipedia articles are a resource patients can discuss with their health care team to improve patient outcomes.”

Noting the initial challenge of selecting an article to enhance, McEwen focused her search on finding articles missing citations or large sections of critical information. 

Ultimately, she discovered Wikipedia articles at the intersection of the course themes and her own personal interests, adding content and citations to articles including De Barsy syndrome, jellyfish dermatitis, evidence-based medicine, tetracycline, congenital rubella syndrome, Alagille syndrome, and Reye syndrome.

McEwen, who particularly enjoyed the creative process of adding content and the chance to expand her biomedical knowledge, was surprised to discover a broad network of scholars actively contributing to Wikipedia.

“I was not aware of the complexity of the behind-the-scenes at Wikipedia,” McEwen explained. “I have also been impressed with the effort to involve scientists and students in improving Wikipedia articles.”

As associate professor of both Family and Community Medicine and Pharmacy Practice at Northeast Ohio Medical University, McEwen co-leads and teaches in the evidence-based medicine thread for first year and second-year medical students. She also serves as the Curriculum Mapper for the university. McEwen credits the WITH Wiki Scientists courses with keeping her on task and on track toward her goals of improving articles amidst her extensive professional responsibilities.  

“I think [editing] is a great way for scientists, health care professionals, librarians, and students to ensure quality information is available to anyone able to access Wikipedia,” said McEwen. “Your work can be seen by a larger population than traditional academic publishing.”

To connect with McEwen on Wikipedia, find her editing under the username EBMLibrarian.

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

When it comes to experts’ understanding of climate science and the public’s understanding, there are some well-documented differences. American Physical Society members have been closing the gaps with impactful work on Wikipedia. With 18 billion page views per month, Wikipedia content has a proven track record for affecting collective behavior across a wide range of sectors. 

Since 2019, the American Physical Society (APS) has empowered 110 members—from a high school student to a Nobel Prize laureate—to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of physics and physicists. These scientists practice their science communication on a worldwide stage, write biographies of historically excluded physicists, leverage Wikidata—the open data repository behind Wikipedia—and are now correcting content gaps related to climate mitigation.

Dr. Allie Lau, the APS Public Engagement Sr. Programs Manager, has been instrumental in advancing the work.

“APS was excited about a Wikipedia training course focused on energy and climate science as this is an area of importance to the Society and its members,” Dr. Lau shared. 

The virtual courses, seven of them so far including the latest climate-focused iteration, present an opportunity for APS members to connect across disciplines and countries like never before. 

“APS recognizes the serious consequences of climate change and urges physicists to contribute to interdisciplinary climate research collaborations and efforts to design solutions to mitigate the human impact on climate,” Dr. Lau added. “The Society is committed to actions that will reduce greenhouse gas concentration and advocates for research and development of carbon-neutral and carbon-free energy technologies.”

Facilitating this chance for physicists to contribute accurate energy research to the public dialogue has been meaningful for the Society. As their Chief External Affairs Officer, Francis Slakey explains, “The Wiki Scientists course is a great tool for achieving our mission of diffusing the knowledge of physics for the benefit of humanity and amplifying the voice for science.” 

Correcting well-documented knowledge gaps

By adding up-to-date climate research to Wikipedia, APS Wiki Scientists supported by Wiki Education are helping correct the following gaps in public understanding: 

People misunderstand climate science and mitigation. 

The public often cites recycling and limiting trash pollution as the actions they think are most impactful for addressing climate change, whereas climate scientists focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions on a much larger scale and across all sectors of society. 

Advances in renewable energy production, like solar* and wind, are some such mitigation strategies that physicists improved on Wikipedia as Wiki Scientists. Morgaine Mandigo-Stoba, one of these physicists, expanded the Wikipedia page about thin-film solar cells, which covers a variety of established and developing thin-film photovoltaic technologies for an audience of 5,000 readers every month. She wrote about what these types of solar cells are made out of; how they work; how they’re produced and the costs of production; their advantages over first-generation silicon solar cells (including being cheaper and safer to produce); recent advancements in how efficient they are for electricity production; their durability and lifetime; how widely used they are in new utility development; and their potential role in meeting international renewable energy goals. She even included a diagram of her own design to illustrate a solar cell I-V curve. 

“Adding good data visualizations was really important to me in terms of making this page accessible to a wide audience,” Mandigo-Stoba shared. “Of course, I hope that this exposure can lead to people making more informed energy choices. One thing we talked about in the course is that people can feel a lot of anxiety around taking action against climate change and one way to alleviate that is to simply expose them to possible solutions. I hope that this page can help alleviate some of that worry that people have about finding the ‘perfect’ energy solution and help them feel empowered to explore new green energy technology.”

Another physicist improved the Wikipedia page on wind power, adding the physics at work in the power transfer from wind into energy. This page receives even more readers per month: close to 30,000! 

As Mandigo-Stoba explains, the exercise of writing a Wikipedia page is one of science translation. “Taking a topic that at its core is very technical and making it useful and interesting to a broad audience like this is a really fun challenge,” she shared.

People don’t connect the effects of climate change to their daily lives.

Many researchers have long assumed that the public doesn’t feel the urgency around mitigating climate change that scientists do. But according to new research, 61% of Americans say global climate change is affecting their local community and 70% are alarmed, concerned, or cautious. However, many still struggle to explain the connection between their lived experiences and the science behind global warming. Fewer understand how they can help. 

That’s why adding regional-specific climate information to Wikipedia pages like climate change in Illinois, as one Wiki Scientist did, is so impactful. This page now explains that, because of climate change, Illinois is likely to experience more frequent flooding, harmful algae blooms on Lake Michigan, and higher temperatures that may harm humans and agriculture. The page also illustrates local mitigation efforts, including strategies to reduce the effects of heat islands, as well as information about the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act–a job retraining program for workers impacted by the transition to renewables.

“When I came across this page for the first time, it was in bad shape,” says APS member Maggie Geppert who tackled the updates. “It was a series of long quotes from a single source from 2016, which is not appropriate for a Wikipedia page. I originally thought about simply going back to the original source and rephrasing the quotes. In that sense, my original goal was to make the page better by just bringing it to some baseline standards. However, a topic like climate change really does need current information, and a single seven-year-old article as a source is not nearly enough. I decided to update the information and expand it from projected effects to current actions people in Illinois are taking to mitigate climate change. People need to know that there is political will in the United States to fight climate change. This is not an impossible task. It’s really, really big and really, really hard, but there are people who are willing to take action now. I chose to edit the Climate Change in Illinois page because it’s about where I live. My students will be able to read it and relate to the places and climate conditions it describes.”

Contributing up-to-date information on this topic in particular counteracts much of the popular mis-narratives circulating about climate science. Wikipedia is nicknamed the “last best place on the internet”, after all.

“When it comes to climate change, there is a lot of misinformation on social media,” Geppert added. “Wikipedia stands as a beacon of truth in an area riddled with lies and misrepresentations.”

People struggle to see where they might pursue climate-related work or they may even distrust scientists.

A Wikipedia biography recognizes a scientist’s contributions in real time. It surfaces her expertise to journalists and panel organizers, humanizes her beyond her CV or university profile, and shows young people interested in STEM what career paths are possible for them. It also does the important work of boosting a scientist’s credibility, changing stereotypes about who gets to be a scientist, and fostering trust in scientific research. This visibility is especially important for climate scientists, who–like other scientists in politicized fields–often encounter pushback in the public sector about how they know what they know.

Wiki Scientists in our courses are putting faces to climate work by writing biographies of scientists. The biographies for Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Hayhoe are much more comprehensive now. And Kate Marvel even has a new photo! Thousands of Wikipedia readers are being exposed to the scientific contributions of these scientists and others like them, every day.

Wiki Education kicked off our 8th APS Wiki Scientists course last week, and participating members will celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month by adding or expanding Wikipedia biographies of Hispanic and Latinx physicists. We’re thrilled at the commitment APS has made toward their mission of providing a welcome and supportive professional home for an active, engaged, and diverse membership, and we look forward to the ongoing work from their dedicated members.

The work lives on.

These are just some of the many examples of helping close the gap between expert and public understanding of climate science.

“Once you get over the fear of editing something which potentially will be read by many people, editing Wikipedia is not that difficult,” one APS Wiki Scientist shared. “Improvements can be made at all levels, from fixing grammar/readability to adding new content. And the benefit is that you are making real contributions to pages that are read by many, helping them make informed perspectives.”

For Geppert, the Wiki Scientists experience was also a new way to interact with her APS membership. “This class was an opportunity for me to mix with physicists in all different places around the world at many different stages in their career,” she added. “It was a lot of fun.”

—

* Links will direct you to Wiki Education’s Dashboard tool, which highlights the parts of Wikipedia articles that scientists in our program are responsible for writing. You also have the option in that window to navigate to the actual Wikipedia article, where you will see the same content. This tool is available to all of Wiki Education’s partners.

Wiki Education is looking to expand its impact on the public’s access to high-quality climate science. If you’re interested in getting involved, visit partner.wikiedu.org to start building your own Wikipedia Initiative with our support.

“Wikipedia is one of the most-visited websites in the world, and the go-to resource for reference and background information,” said Christian Anderson who completed our recent Wiki Scientists course sponsored by the American Physical Society. “When STEM minorities are included in Wikipedia, their visibility immediately increases. It’s difficult to imagine a more efficient way to celebrate achievements from all kinds of folks. As a physicist (one of the majors with the fewest women) at BYU (one of the least ethnically diverse schools in America), it’s easy to think only white men do what I do; Wikipedia is a powerful counter to those sorts of historically-deterministic blinders.”

Christian Anderson is a marine biologist and theoretical physicist, who also studies Finnish in his spare time. When he realized that the English Wikipedia was missing a biography of Dr. Eugenie Lisitzin, an oceanographer who was the first Finnish woman to earn a PhD in physics, he figured he was a great person to write it.

“I’ve been strongly committed to increasing minority involvement in STEM for decades. I have also taught myself a bit of wiki editing, and I thought this was a fantastic opportunity to combine both interests. I was delighted to find a physical oceanographer (my two fields) who broke so many gender barriers in her own country, and that I happened to have rudimentary abilities in the uncommon language containing most of the secondary sources about her. But what really made me feel like this was meant to be was late in the project, I stumbled upon a list of visiting scholars to my own former department (The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD), and learned that Lisitzin had spent a six month sabbatical on the same campus as me in 1959.”

There are a few reasons a biography might not exist on Wikipedia yet. The figure may not meet Wikipedia’s requirements for notability. There may not be enough secondary sources about them to cite. Or, (and what is very often the case), someone simply has not taken the time to write it.

The argument could definitely be made for Dr. Lisitzin’s deserving an article. But at first, Christian had some trouble tracking down enough online resources about her.

“I understand Wikipedia’s policy of referencing secondary sources to maintain standards of notability. Unfortunately, one side effect of this policy is that it causes Wikipedia to reflect societal bias against women and minorities in science,” said Christian. Luckily, he knew where else to look.

“I sought help from some wonderful people. Ari Miettinen at the University of Helsinki dug Dr. Lisitzin’s 1927 dissertation out of the archives and scanned the first five pages for me, so I could find out who her advisor was. I also discovered that her future boss at the Institute of Marine Science was on her committee, explaining why she shifted from particle physics to oceanography. Researchers in the Finnish Genealogy Facebook group and at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City were able to help me find the family’s immigration records from Germany (where her father was a railway engineer) to Finland, and her only obituary in a small local newspaper. Without their help, I wouldn’t have known even where she died, much less that an Act of Parliament was passed in 1961 to allow her to become the first director of a federal science ministry when the current director took a two year sabbatical.”

It’s exactly this kind of collaboration, crowd-sourcing, and passionate follow-through that makes Wikipedia work and makes it wonderful. And having the support of our Wiki Scientists course gave Christian some added skills and confidence, even though he had been editing Wikipedia since 2014.

“I had written two articles before taking this class, but learned something new every meeting, including how to customize my personal profile, all about the wiki journal, community standards in talk pages, where to get help, and so on. Will Kent was an excellent discussion leader.

“I love Wikipedia as a source, and am always delighted when I get to contribute. After the class, I went back and improved an article I created in 2016 about Ludwig Berwald, a brilliant Jewish mathematician in Vienna who submitted his last paper for publication the morning before Nazis took him to the concentration camp where he would die. That is a powerful story, and one that deserves the best writing I can bring to it.”

“Ludwig and Lisitzin show that even with the millions of articles already available, significant and inspiring stories are still waiting to be told. I’m delighted that I now have the skills and opportunity to share them via Wikipedia.”

Sign up for an open course at learn.wikiedu.org or explore sponsoring a customized course like the American Physical Society did at partner.wikiedu.org.

Sofía Flores Fuentes is a science communicator. She’s been a university professor, a civil servant, and an independent public engagement person. Currently, she’s working as a communicator at the Physics Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her most recent medium of science communication? Wikipedia.

“Wikipedia is a great platform, if not the best platform, to freely communicate science and information based on evidence,” Sofía says. “It reaches any corner of the world (that has internet access) so anyone can exploit the information located here. I think as science communicators we have the responsibility of knowing how to use Wikipedia.”

Sofía learned to edit Wikipedia through a recent Wiki Scientists course run by Wiki Education and sponsored by the American Physical Society (APS). A colleague had recommended the course, and she knew it was the help she needed to jumpstart her work on Wikipedia. The course focused on improving biographies of underrepresented physicists on Wikipedia, a cause near and dear to Sofía’s heart.

While the course was taught in English and focused on the English Wikipedia, Sofía took the opportunity to use her bilingualism to improve Spanish Wikipedia articles too. She expanded the article on María Ester Brandan and created the article on Myriam Mondragón Ceballos.

“The Wiki Scientists course gave me the tools to write an article. Even though the Spanish version changes a bit, I had the chance to go into the platform, learn the process and how it works in general terms,” Sofía says. “However, the most important thing I got from the course was the confidence to do it. Wikipedia seemed like a dark universe to me, that couldn’t be penetrated that easily. After this course I now feel like it is a fascinating world created and nourished by a vibrant community, and all the respect and values involved.”

Sofía found the differences in processes between the Spanish and English Wikipedia interesting, as well as the differences in discussions. She’s inspired to keep editing articles about Mexican physicists, especially women. And she hopes to have events at her institution to support others to edit as well.

“I am a science communicator who loves writing articles. But I also stand for the access to information, so I try to dedicate my professional work so people can have the possibility of learning and being informed. I also think that humanity can do great things that can benefit other people, so I believe Wikipedia is a great effort for humans to reach this goal,” Sofía says. “I’m just grateful for APS giving me the opportunity to learn. I think that a lot of people like me can make the most from your work so we can also help others.”

One of the central components of the American Physical Society (APS)’s mission is to share physics knowledge — and, since 2020, one way the association has done this is through partnering with Wiki Education to host a series of Wiki Scientists courses. In these courses, Wiki Education staff teach APS members — physicists — how to contribute to Wikipedia. Some courses have focused on improving Wikipedia’s coverage of physics topics, while others have focused on biographies of historically excluded physicists.

“In the APS Wiki Scientist courses, our members build their science communication and public engagement skills. They work on articles of notable women and historically marginalized groups in physics, increasing the visibility of these physicists. This helps expand the public perception of ‘who is a physicist’ and can promote broader participation in the discipline. They also contribute to articles on various physics topics, using their expertise to add information and supporting references. Articles with clear, accessible content help physics learners and can generate excitement for physics topics,” says Allie Lau, Public Engagement Programs Manager at APS. “Taken together, the contributions of APS members help develop Wikipedia content that accurately reflects the makeup of the physics community and the work of physicists.”

In the five courses to date, 84 APS members have added more than 109,000 words of content to 311 articles on Wikipedia. The physicists’ work has already been read more than 13 million times. For example, the nitrogen-vacancy center article edited by a participant in one of the courses has been read more than 58,000 times. From a biographies course, the new article on Qatari physicist Ilham Al-Qaradawi has been viewed more than 10,000 times. These examples showcase why these Wiki Scientist courses are helping advance APS’s mission. Participants report the courses are meaningful — and numbered among them is even a Nobel laureate!

In addition to supporting our overall partnership, Allie signed up to participate in the most recent Wikipedia course focused on improving biographies of underrepresented physicists. Since she has a background in physics education, Allie chose to expand the article on Lillian C. McDermott, a pioneer in the field.

“The course taught me the core pillars of Wikipedia editing and I learned about the neutral tone of voice to use in articles. I also learned about the guidelines for notability and verifiability,” Allie says. “Wiki Education provides our members with access to high quality training from expert Wikipedians who are also excellent teachers.”

Allie says she’d never used Wikipedia’s talk pages before taking the course. Understanding those helped Allie see the community of volunteer contributors who work tirelessly to keep Wikipedia the reliable source it is. Thanks to the course, Allie now feels comfortable participating in APS edit-a-thons and other Wikipedia events.

Overall, Allie says she enjoyed the course — and so did the members she took it with. APS routinely gets positive feedback from members who participate in the course, which leads them to keep partnering with Wiki Education to offer more courses. Up next is a Wikidata course, focused on improving the coverage of physics on the linked open data counterpart to Wikipedia.

Allie sees these Wiki Scientist courses, especially those focused on improving biographies of underrepresented physicists, to be an important part of APS’s strategy.

“A core part of the APS’s vision is to foster equity and inclusion in physics, and increase diversity in all its dimensions. When we improve the diversity of physicist biographies on Wikipedia, we are amplifying the voices and increasing the visibility of physicists from groups historically marginalized in the discipline,” Allie says. “This is important not only because it recognizes their contributions to the field, but also because it helps shift and expand the perception of who can be a physicist.”

She encourages APS’s peer academic associations who are also interested in improving representation in their discipline to consider partnering with Wiki Education to host courses.

“If other associations have the goals of fostering equity, inclusion, and diversity in their field, as well as increasing access to their discipline’s knowledge, Wikipedia is a great avenue to explore,” Allie says. “It is one of the most popular websites in the world and it is easy to contribute to.”

Interested in learning more about a Wikipedia or Wikidata course? Visit learn.wikiedu.org.

Image credit: PhysicsSphinx, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Carmen Fernández Fisac had long wanted to start contributing content to Wikipedia.

“It’s a resource I’ve used countless times and I was excited to give back by adding content that could help others as well, but I always felt like I lacked the tools to do it properly,” she says. “What if instead of helping I ended up making it worse?”

Enter Wiki Education’s Wiki Scientist training course, hosted by the National Science Policy Network (NSPN). A Ph.D. student, Carmen studies biomedical engineering and neuroscience. She’s researching how the brain balances sensory information and intention during voluntary movement, using brain-computer interfaces.

“I am also at my core a science communicator: as fulfilling as conducting research is, nothing makes me as happy as writing about science for different audiences and teaching students what I know,” she says. “This course was the push I needed, not just because it made navigating the editing process easier, but because it was a confirmation that Wikipedia wanted people like me to contribute. The course offering through NSPN was an explicit invitation for scholars to dive in and have a tangible impact on knowledge accessibility, and I was thrilled for the possibility.”

Carmen says the NSPN Wiki Scientists course gave her the skills to navigate Wikipedia’s rules and guidelines in a way that wasn’t overwhelming. She also learned about the community of Wikipedia editors, something she’d never before considered.

“The thing that completely blew me away was the powerful sense of community among Wikipedians,” she says. “I knew the premise of Wikipedia and had heard the classic ‘it works, despite all odds’, but I had never really dived deep into discussions in Talk pages or the internal initiatives bringing editors together to push through more meaningful improvements. I don’t think I understood the extent of it until the course dropped me right in the middle of it and encouraged me to engage in those conversations. Watching people collaborate selflessly like that was inspiring and heartwarming, and it only made me want to do more in Wikipedia.”

Carmen tackled Wikipedia’s article on neurotechnology, which averages thousands of page views each month.

“Like with other transformative technologies, I think it is incredibly important to stay ahead of scientific advances in neurotechnology and consider their potential ethical and social repercussions, not only for policy makers but also for those conducting the research,” she says. “Because it is something that has been present in science fiction for a long time, I especially wanted to work on the definition and the ethical considerations of neurotechnology to help separate the fantasy elements from the reality so that the concerns that do exist can be identified and put in context. A lot of the work I did ended up focusing on restructuring content in addition to writing to make sure sections were balanced and written in a neutral tone.”

Although the course wrapped up, Carmen has continued editing the article, making gradual improvement. She’s excited to keep editing Wikipedia — both the English and Spanish language versions.

“I have noticed that many science-related Wikipedia articles are less detailed in Spanish than they are in English, possibly due to the majority of international research being published in English,” she says. “As a bilingual speaker with a scientific background, I feel this is somewhere I can make impactful contributions to make Spanish articles more complete. I think multilingual science communication is absolutely critical if we want to reach local communities everywhere, and I am excited to help reduce language barriers if I can by making more information available in Spanish.”

Carmen hopes more experts like her are able to contribute — in any language. And she sees courses like the Wiki Education one she took that brings experts to Wikipedia as being key for the future.

“You don’t have to be an expert to add accurate information, but the unique value that an expert brings to an initiative like Wikipedia, I think, is not given by the wealth of detail they could go into on a certain subject — which would likely overwhelm the non-expert reader — but rather by their insight into the building blocks of the subject, allowing them to identify which are the critical details that need to be included to capture the essence of a concept and making a complex field of study penetrable to its outsiders,” she says.

She found the immediate impact personally rewarding as well.

“It’s so rare in life to be able to identify an issue that you would like to correct for those coming after you and in the same second be able to fix it, then and there,” Carmen says. “Getting a closer look at Wikipedia and the community behind it has restored a bit of my faith in humanity. Sometimes the world seems a little bleak, but I see Wikipedia continuing to work despite all odds and I think ‘you know, we might just make it as a species’.”

Interested in hosting a course like the NSPN course Carmen took? Visit partner.wikiedu.org.

Image credit: Illustrated by Jasmina El Bouamraoui and Karabo Poppy Moletsane, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Chemist Maggie Tam had never edited Wikipedia before taking one of our recent 500 Wiki Women Scientists courses — in fact, she didn’t even know you could.

“I used to think that each Wikipedia article was written by a single author,” Maggie admits. “I didn’t realize that anyone can edit and make changes to articles. Before the class, I never clicked on the History page, or the Talk page of articles. It is very heartwarming to find out the extent of community collaborative involvement in the articles.”

Maggie is now part of that community. As a volunteer, she’s the Communications Committee Co-Chair for Females in Mass Spectrometry, a nonprofit community that supports women in the field of mass spectrometry. In an effort to help improve Wikipedia’s coverage of the topic, she connected with 500 Women Scientists, an organization that partnered with Wiki Education to offer this course, led by Wiki Education’s Will Kent and Ian Ramjohn. Maggie signed up.

“I imagined the class to be similar to learning to drive, that there would be studying about rules, a road experience in a car with an instructor and dual brakes, and finally a road test,” Maggie explains. “I was skeptical to hear that we could begin to edit in the real Wikipedia (not just the sandbox) after the first week of training, which would be equivalent to driving on the road! As a matter of fact, it is astonishingly easy to start editing and creating an article, especially with visual editing. The course covered a good number of Wikipedia policies and resources to give us confidence. In the driving analogy, Will Kent and Ian Ramjohn are the dual brakes, who helped troubleshoot issues. There is a continuous road test in the form of reviews and edits from the Wikipedia community.”

She started by creating an article on chemist Hilary R. Bollan. Next, using Professor Hannes Röst’s list of mass spectrometrists, she created the articles for two “red links”, or missing articles, Catherine E. Costello and Jennifer Van Eyk. Then she made edits to the existing articles on Ying Ge and Vicki Wysocki.

The outcomes were great for representation of women chemists on Wikipedia — and for Maggie, who says she liked the class setting.

“I enjoyed the comradeship,” she says. “Once a week, I get to spend my lunch hour with other women scientists from different parts of the world, all working towards creating biographies to improve representation on Wikipedia.”

Now that the class is over, Maggie intends to keep working on adding more women scientists to Wikipedia, and engaging others in the Females in Mass Spectrometry group with an edit-a-thon using the 500 Women Scientists and Wiki Education resources. She wants Wikipedia’s coverage of women scientists to reflect the reality of the women already in the field — and inspire the next generation of scientists.

“There is a song in Girl Guides called ‘Yes She Can’,” Maggie says. “When I ask girls in my Girl Guides Brownies unit to research on women role models, they often start with online resources — Wikipedia being one of them. These little girls will learn more about the amazing pioneering work of women scientists when more articles exist in Wikipedia.”

Interested in hosting a course like the 500 Women Scientists course Maggie took? Visit partner.wikiedu.org.