Academics and Wikipedia 

Among many academics, Wikipedia has a poor reputation. It’s not uncommon for college professors to discourage students from using the site or penalize them for quoting, citing or referencing it in their written work. Usually left unstated, the assumption behind this attitude is that, since it does not go through the channels of peer review characteristic of academic research, Wikipedia content doesn’t meet the right standards of accuracy and verifiability, and is, therefore, inherently unreliable. In this way, academia’s model of legitimation via peer review (in which quality control is ensured by vetted scholars in positions of institutional power) is pitted against Wikipedia’s more malleable and decentralized model (in which quality control is distributed across a wide network of agents known as “Wikipedians” who build content and fact-check one another collectively).

This resistance is hardly surprising given that we academics are trained from the earliest stages of our professional formation to equate scholarship with the system of peer-review that has ruled higher education, by some accounts, since the 1600s. For many of us, scholarship is synonymous with peer-reviewed works, which is to say, publications anonymously evaluated and approved by experts in the field. Measured against this standard, of course, Wikipedia’s model of knowledge production looks more than vulgar and unrefined. It looks positively dubious. By shunning legitimation by the few in favor of legitimation by the many, this model seems to do away with the very notion of expertise, and to confuse what the Greeks called doxa (opinion) for episteme (knowledge). Since anyone and everyone can be a Wikipedian, or so the argument goes, anything and everything can end up on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it’s true or false. 

While we cannot deny that Wikipedia’s model of knowledge production has its limits (which model doesn’t?), it is revealing that those who oppose it most feverishly tend to be those who are least familiar with it, with what it is and how it works. For instance, even critics who know that behind every Wikipedia page there is a large community of contributors who fact-check, update, and cross-reference its claims may not realize that behind this community there is a complex constellation of rules, guidelines, and principles regulating the behavior of its members. Yes, practically anyone can become a Wikipedian. But this does not mean that Wikipedia is a digital Wild West where “anything goes.”

Thanks to its internal quality control mechanisms, Wikipedia often yields content that matches,  in terms of epistemic merit, the best of what the academic system of peer review has to offer. As early as 2005, a mere four years after Wikipedia’s launch, the prestigious journal Nature published an article showing that entries on the new site surpassed those in the Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of accuracy and credibility, putting the newcomer above its more prestigious cousin as far as epistemic reliability is concerned. Since then, the line between academia’s centralized and Wikipedia’s decentralized models of legitimation has only continued to blur. Nowadays, more and more academics are incorporating Wikipedia into their courses in one way or another, with a few even suggesting that academic scholarship should emulate Wikipedia’s malleable approach to knowledge creation in order to meet the informational and pedagogical challenges of the new century.  

Wikipedia In the Classroom

In early 2024, I partnered with Wiki Education (a nonprofit that seeks to improve Wikipedia) to incorporate a Wikipedia assignment into a course I planned to teach that summer entitled “Humanities 315: The History of Science From the Scientific Revolution.” Beginning from the Copernican revolution in astronomical physics, this course traced the evolution of modern science through the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, paying attention to the progression of scientific concepts “from above,” as well as to the social, cultural, and political forces that shape scientific rationality “from below.”

At the time, Wiki Education was promoting an initiative designed to close a gap in Wikipedia’s archive. By Wikipedia’s own admission, scientists from traditionally underrepresented racial and ethnic groups (Latinx, Black, Asian, Pacific-Islander, Indigenous, etc.) are significantly underrepresented on “the free encyclopedia,” resulting in a problematic imbalance. So, Wiki Education was on the hunt for professors who might be interested in incorporating an assignment into their classes that would put students to work on closing this gap. The basic idea was that students would become temporary Wikipedians and write biographical entries for influential scientists from minoritarian backgrounds who did not yet have a presence on the site.A two-in-one package, the assignment sought to educate students about the ins-and-outs of Wikipedia while giving them an opportunity to help address a concrete racial injustice tied to digital representation.

Given that my course dealt explicitly with how classism, patriarchy, and white supremacy have influenced the history of Western science (and given my own interest in the relationship between racial oppression and the politics of knowledge), I decided to apply. Upon hearing I was accepted, I quickly edited my course syllabus to make room for the five-week long assignment, which asked students to:

1. Create a Wikipedia profile 
2. Familiarize themselves with Wikipedia’s “backend” software program (where the content that will eventually appears on the site is created, edited, and fact-checked)
3. Select a scientist from an underrepresented community from a list provided by Wiki Education
4. Conduct research on that scientist’s personal history, educational background, and contributions to the fields of science and technology 
5. Write, in groups of four or five, an entry on that scientist adhering to Wikipedia’s policies concerning citations and references, and 
6. Publish their entry (pending approval by site)

Students didn’t have to reach the final stage (publication) to receive full credit for the assignment, but they did have to complete all the steps leading up to it. And they were graded based on how far into the assignment they got and on the quality of their individual contributions to the collective writing effort. (I should mention that, as part of the initiative, Wiki Education provided support in the form of a $700 stipend and two staff members who helped answer student questions about how to create entries on the site). 

Summer came and went, and the assignment was by and large a success. Though there were hiccups along the way (some students produced entries that didn’t meet Wikipedia’s standard for publication, while others didn’t bother creating a profile in the first place), the majority of students reported enjoying every stage of the process. 

 For starters, many were thrilled to learn about how Wikipedia pages are made. Although none of my students were Wikipedians prior to the class, all of them reported visiting the site on a regular basis, even when professors explicitly warned against it. Wikipedia was already a key part of their online experience, a recurring digital landing spot. Thus, seeing the backend program, familiarizing themselves with the platform’s rules and regulations, and seeing a collectivist model of knowledge production in action helped demystify the site, which in turn gave them a more nuanced understanding of its various strengths and limitations. For example, the assignment enabled them to see that even if Wikipedia content isn’t put through the grind of traditional methods of peer review, it is subject to norms of accuracy and verification that make it more reliable than the average blog, website, or social media profile. At the same time, this behind-the-scenes access clarified for them that while Wikipedia may be good for general information about a large variety of topics, it’s not the place to go for original research and innovative discoveries. 

“Real” Writing 

The most common refrain I heard from students as we debriefed about the experience at the end of the summer semester was that they were proud to have finally worked on “something real.” “I felt like this was my first real assignment in a college class,” one said. Another followed with: “It was more real than writing the usual essay.” 

I confess: I didn’t respond well to these claims. I balked at the suggestion that traditional classroom assignments (the weekly response, the midterm essay, the final project, etc.) were somehow less substantive or less real than assignments that simply happened to have the name of a recognizable organization attached to them. Was writing for Wikipedia readers really more “real” than writing for me, or were my students just awe-struck by the fact that they were contributing to one of the most famous online platforms? 

It was a fair question. Or so I thought. 

After mulling over their comments for a couple of days, however, I realized that my reaction was…well, reactionary. Rather than listening to what my students were telling me about their experience of the assignment, I chose to worry about what I thought their comments meant about my teaching style, which regularly features the kinds of assignments they characterized as not-so-real. By projecting this insecurity onto my students, I failed to listen to them and to do what every professor should aspire to do, which is meet students halfway in conversation. To course-correct, I had to ask myself a question that demanded more careful consideration: In invoking the so-called reality of this assignment, what were my students flagging for me about assignments, homework, and education more generally? What did this concept mean to them such that it seemed to illuminate their experience? No sooner than I framed the problem in this manner, I came to see their comments in a new light–no longer as veiled criticisms of my pedagogy, but as sincere critiques of our education system and what traditional approaches to pedagogy do to students’ relationship to writing. 

From an early age, students are taught to write for their professors. Every student knows that what they produce in the classroom will rarely, if ever, be seen by anyone other than the person who has the power to give them an ‘A’ or an ‘F.’ Thus, for most students, writing is tangled up from the get-go with complex dynamics of power, discipline, and submission. Given the asymmetrical nature of the student-teacher relationship, it’s only a matter of time before students learn to give their teachers what they (the students) think they (their teachers) want. So, students master a skill that isn’t easy to unlearn. They learn to write exclusively  for “the Professor,” that amorphous character whose power in the classroom is virtually unchecked. From elementary school to college, the task is the same: Here is a topic, now write about it for an audience of exactly one (where the “one” in question is the person with power over you)! 

One consequence of writing under these conditions is that students are never asked to imagine what they might have to (or want to) say to a broader audience, by which I mean an audience composed of different kinds of people, each of which with their own reasons for wanting to listen in. This, I now believe, is what the Wikipedia assignment offered my students for the first time in their lives. It offered them an audience that wasn’t “the Professor,” an audience of not-me. And my students experienced this as a breath of fresh air. This new audience freed them from me, but it also freed them to imagine a host of other subjects in the position of “reader,” which altered their psychological landscape. I still remember one student in particular, a humanities major, who said: “It’s kinda cool that my mom might read this. I know she’ll want to show it to her friends and to my aunts. Maybe it will help her understand what I’ve been doing in college!” For that student, this assignment was more real. It was more real because it had the power to touch her social world and maybe even make it tilt. Had any other assignment ever done that? 

Furthermore, the mere prospect of having one’s writing “out there” (read: in the World Wide Web) was also transformative for some students. For them, the overarching question was no longer “What should I write in order to get the grade I want?” but “Knowing that strangers may read what I write, what do I actually want to say and how?” Even when my students didn’t reach the final stage of publishing their work on Wikipedia, the possibility that their work might have a life beyond the classroom was enough to shake things up and give them a glimpse of what another relationship to writing might look like.

Conclusion

Of course, I do not want to romanticize the Wikipedia assignment. Some of my students were annoyed by the assignment from the start. Others found the backend program counterintuitive and hard to use (and on this point, I concur). But even the students who complained about the nuts and bolts of the task later reported feeling happy about having participated in a pedagogical exercise with a political mission: helping scientists from underrepresented backgrounds receive the recognition they deserve. 

In effect, I could say that the Wikipedia assignment turned my classroom into an interesting house of mirrors where diversity was reflected off of multiple surfaces at once. Firstly, I, a professor of color, was teaching a class about the historical exclusion of minorities from the modern scientific project. Secondly, I was teaching this material to a highly diverse group of undergraduates attending at a Hispanic-Serving (HSI) and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI). And finally, I was asking these students at this institution to help correct one of the ways in which this historical exclusion continues to be felt in the here and now—namely, the “gap” in Wikipedia’s coverage of the history of science and technology. My hope is that by learning to move between these layers of reflection, students came out of my summer class with a better appreciation of the gaps that have shaped our past and continue to inform our present. 

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 offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

1. Why was it important that Wikipedia have an article about Ali Guarneros Luna and why did you choose to create it? 

Ali Guarneros Luna is both inspiring and noteworthy. Her story is nothing short of remarkable – her upbringing and the obstacles she overcame to achieve her success are deeply moving. As a Chicana, a woman of Mexican-American descent, I found her story resonated with me on a personal level. 

My own parents faced significant challenges when they immigrated to the United States at a young age, working hard to support themselves and their families. Luna’s journey reminded me of their struggles and resilience, as well as the sacrifices they made to build a better future. Her story is one of perseverance, strength, and determination, which is so inspiring to women of all ages and backgrounds, but especially to Latina women like me. What makes her even more admirable is her role at NASA, an organization that has always been a source of fascination and inspiration for me. Learning about her involvement in various groundbreaking projects was truly astonishing. It’s not every day you hear about a Latina woman contributing so significantly to the field of aerospace engineering and space exploration.

Her achievements highlight the importance of representation and show that women of diverse backgrounds can succeed in STEM fields. For these reasons, I felt compelled to give her the recognition she deserves by ensuring her story is shared widely. She serves as a powerful role model for anyone with big dreams, but especially for Latinas aspiring to make a difference in fields like science, technology, engineering, and beyond.

2. What did you especially want to get right about the article? 

I wanted to get her story right and get all of her information in the correct chronological order so that no part of her story was lost. I wanted to accurately portray her struggles, where she came from, and how she took it upon herself to succeed and become an influential figure in NASA and aerospace engineering. In telling her story, I wanted to make sure that her achievements did not overshadow her struggles, but rather were shown as integral to who she is and what she has accomplished. By doing so, I hoped to provide an honest and inspiring portrayal of a woman who serves as a role model, particularly for Latina women and others who aspire to break barriers in STEM fields.

3. Wikipedia has significant gaps in its coverage of women of color in its biographies. How was adding this biography meaningful to you?

Adding a biography of a diverse woman in STEM was deeply meaningful to me because I have a genuine passion for STEM and a strong desire to see greater representation within the field. Writing Ali Guarneros Luna’s biography felt like more than just a project – it was an opportunity to bring her inspiring story to light and to help close the gaps in coverage that exist for women of color on platforms like Wikipedia. It’s no secret that women, especially women of color, are underrepresented in STEM fields and often overlooked in historical and contemporary records. Being able to contribute to changing that narrative, even in a small way, was an honor. Ali Guarneros Luna’s achievements are remarkable, and her journey is one that deserves to be widely known. Highlighting her story was also personally fulfilling. It allowed me to celebrate a Latina woman who has made significant contributions to NASA and aerospace engineering. Knowing that my work could help ensure her legacy is recognized and inspire others to pursue their passions in STEM makes this accomplishment something I’m truly proud of.

4. How would you describe the power of Wikipedia in shaping people’s awareness and understanding of notable figures like Ali Guarneros Luna?

Wikipedia serves as one of the most widely accessed sources of information in the world. Typically, the first source for a person to read up about a topic or person at a glance is Wikipedia.  Its accessibility and collaborative nature make it a critical platform for documenting stories that might otherwise be overlooked, particularly those of underrepresented groups. By including biographies of individuals like Luna, Wikipedia not only preserves their legacies but also broadens the public’s perception of who can succeed in fields like STEM. For many, Wikipedia is a starting point for learning about influential figures, and having accurate, detailed information about women of color like Luna ensures that their contributions are recognized and celebrated. In Luna’s case, her biography showcases her incredible journey, overcoming challenges to excel at NASA and in aerospace engineering. By bringing her story to light, it does its job by making the information gap smaller. Wikipedia contributes to greater representation and inspires future generations to aim high, pursue their passions, and break barriers.

5. How did you feel about this assignment compared to a traditional assignment?

To be honest, at first this assignment was intimidating. I did not know what to expect, but I ended up enjoying it. I enjoyed learning the process and what actually went into Wikipedia. Knowing now the guidelines and effort that one must put into making a Wikipedia page, I appreciate the process a lot more. An assignment that contributes to a live encyclopedia makes all the difference from a traditional assignment, because what you are working on feels like it matters and it is amazing to see the final product.

6. What was your favorite part of editing Wikipedia?

My favorite part of editing Wikipedia was when I was able to see it all come together. It was amazing seeing peer reviews, and then going back into the editing process. Though it was time-consuming, it was worth it. I got to see how a list of information started to look like a biography, then see it go live.

7. Will you continue to edit?

Yes! I will continue to edit. I plan to keep up to date with the other accomplishments Ali Guarneros Luna makes, and I would love to keep editing the article and seeing her biography grow. I would like to edit other starting biographies, as well.

Valeria’s work on Wikipedia is part of a larger Wiki Education initiative sponsored by the Broadcom Foundation, which supports the creation of new biographies of diverse people in STEM on Wikipedia.

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 offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

I teach media effects to professional public communication students. I used the Wikipedia assignment as a final collaborative project in a 300 level class that meets the diversity requirement for Newhouse undergraduate students across majors including journalism, advertising, public relations, television, radio, and film, music business, and more.

This course is situated at the intersection of American history, psychology, and the media industry to help contextualize how media impacts society, specifically with respect to perpetuating long standing disparities. I was excited to incorporate the Wikipedia assignment into this course to demonstrate how the absence of available information (and perspectives) is just as important as the information that is available. Especially in the wake of the 20th century where an exponential increase in content and accessibility can cause people to believe that what is not recorded is not valuable (Corsbie-Massay, 2021, p54).

Project Process

Students began with a personal exploration of how they use Wikipedia and what they have been told about the quality of information on Wikipedia. Almost everyone reported relying  on Wikipedia for context at some point, even though past teachers and instructors repeatedly warned them that the information on Wikipedia was not reliable. However, only a handful (<10%) had ever attempted to edit a Wikipedia page. 

We then read “Interrupting epistemicide: A practical framework for naming, identifying, and ending epistemic injustice in the information professions” from Patin et al. (2021) and discussed how the absence of information impacted ongoing institutions and systemic disparities. We also had a guest lecture from the University Librarian affiliated with Newhouse that described the resources available through the library and the importance of discerning, digitizing, and distributing information. 

I then provided students with a list of locally relevant topics that did not have Wikipedia pages, or whose pages were categorized as “Stub.” This list was wide ranging and included neighborhoods (33%) and local non profits (26%), as well as gay bars, historical markers, and even the jail located just 1 mile away from our classroom. Students indicated their preference and were paired accordingly. At the end of the semester, each pair recorded and posted a 4m presentation to the class webpage answering the following questions…

1. What did you find most interesting about writing a Wikipedia Article?
2. What did you find most difficult about writing a Wikipedia Article?
3. How did the class content connect to this experience?
4. What should readers of your article be sensitized to?
5. How do you hope future Wikipedians will edit/add to your article? 

What I Observed: Generational differences in working “under the hood”

The students really struggled with the interface of Wikipedia, which was interesting for a generation that has been labeled “tech savvy.” The project reminded them that there is a difference between content and technology: Creating content has become so user-friendly, creators do not need  a proper understanding of how things work “under the hood.” I don’t know if any students attended the office hours held by Wiki Education (then again, few students come to my own office hours) and although they completed the exercises associated with the project (for which they received credit), they moved quickly through the assignments and still expressed confusion. In the end almost all of the pairs made it work, but those who waited until the last minute really suffered. 

Furthermore, only a handful of students sought information that was not already digitized (e.g., newspapers, library resources), despite extensive discussion regarding the digital divide and information injustice.  I thought that public communications students would be excited to publicly communicate the information from the not-so-distant past, but several students stated in their reflections that they couldn’t find additional information online and gave up. This surprised me as  I thought I had made it clear that most sources existed before the internet and  if something is not online then that means it simply hasn’t yet been found. In my opinion, the students did not yet recognize that digitizing the past is a desperate social need. 

What My Students Observed: Wikipedia is not a source, it is a resource.

Many described the strange feeling of being on the other side of the Wikipedia interface but by the end of the semester, they reported a greater understanding of how Wikipedia is made. This helped improve their ability to use Wikipedia as a resource, including contributing and editing. Many journalism students also expressed that the objective lens required by Wikipedia did not align with how they were taught to write; they were taught to share objective information through a subjective lens (i.e., storytelling) to engage the audience. The project also revealed the collective backend labor involved in every Wikipedia contribution. Together, these observations help disabuse the students of  talking points they heard  prior to the project (i.e., “You can’t trust Wikipedia”). 

Students ultimately connected this exercise to recognizing epistemic injustice as well as the role of Wikipedia in working to overcome social disparities. They saw ways to contribute to the public discourse and elevate public awareness through Wikipedia as a popular independent information resource. We talked about hyperlinking local entities (e.g., non-profits, neighborhoods) to other state or national pages with more web traffic, as well as the importance of information evolution (e.g., information was not just “outdated,” it needed to be “updated,” and this ongoing gap always provided new stories and angles to pursue). Overall, they responded positively to the exercise as it gave them insight into a staple of their information ecosystem (Introne, et al., 2024). 

In Conclusion

I would definitely do this project again. It was an honor to digitize and distribute information about local entities. Having said that, the learning curve for the students was sharp as was the learning curve for me as the instructor. In the future, I would probably dedicate a lecture to going through some of the exercises as a group to ensure students do not rush through this important material and that everyone was on the same page (literally!). But at the end of the semester, I really felt like we were helping advance a cause associated with a popular quote from author and activist Grace Lee Boggs: “History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past” (Boggs & Kurashige, 2012, p. 79). Therefore by synthesizing and digitizing stories from the past, we are literally doing the work of writing history. 

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 offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

For over a decade I have taught a history and political science course on American citizenship that coincides with the fall election season in even-numbered years. In my usual version, students wrote concise research papers posted to a public-facing website (one which, it must be admitted, garners negligible page views). So I already had oriented the course slightly towards student work designed to engage with the general public, away from the kind of final assignment destined to sit in my learning management system’s gated garden forever, likely not even retrieved by its own author. Joining Wiki Education for Fall 2024 and having my 20 students live-edit Wikipedia articles, I suspected, could be a better way of achieving course goals of having students see the relevance of their research in real time, with authentic stakes. 

My students (and I) definitely found a Wikipedia-editing project challenging. Before the class began I selected about 40 course-related articles rated S or C class from which to choose, but they varied greatly in length, complexity, and research potential. There is a steep learning curve to navigating Wikipedia’s editing platform, even though Wiki Education’s tutorials are well-designed to guide students through the basics and get them editing confidently. I had to consider how much class time to devote to project instruction, debriefing, and troubleshooting, reducing some instructional time on other topics. Only a few students easily found scholarly reference material or saw immediate ways to improve their article, while others kept digging but couldn’t find many new sources or and got stuck on how to change what was already there.

Grading posed its own difficulties, which came up frequently in the weekly office hours held by the Wiki Education team. How could I standardize performance expectations when the articles were themselves so different? How would students know they were “done”? Would I grant an equivalent grade to those who added references or images vs. those who rearranged section text vs.  those who cleaned up jargon? If I wasn’t grading on word count, number of sources added, or longevity of edits, then what, precisely, were students being evaluated on? Especially as a first-timer, I found it helpful to talk with other instructors working through these issues. Focusing more on process and progress – evaluated partly by weekly journals and how well they stayed on track with the project schedule – rather than final product quality, resolved some (but not all) of the grading concerns. The dashboard is extremely well-designed both for student users and for faculty instructors, giving me clear access to their work and allowing progress-tracking throughout the semester.  

Despite these struggles, my students “got” the assignment in ways that were truly invigorating. For many of them Wikipedia had been a taboo source, one they’re not allowed to cite in college papers and had been actively steered away from in the past – yet one they all used regularly, sometimes guiltily. This project made them better users of the site, as it introduced them to the community of Wikipedians and their robust editorial policies, all of which was invisible to them before. Their audience became clearer: they weren’t writing just for their professor, but for general readers like themselves. Contributing to articles on voting rights, immigration law and citizenship requirements – in an election year, no less – lent urgency and importance to their work. 

In reflective essays at the end of the project, my students expressed genuine pride in what they’d accomplished. 14 out of 18 respondents gave themselves an A or B grade, citing specific improvements to their article and describing the level of effort, time, and care they put into the project (I will note I tended to concur with those self-assessments!). Through class peer review and feedback they got from fellow Wikipedia editors, they got a better grasp on the collaborative nature of knowledge, as comments like these attest:

“I also realized that people present information in different ways. Large projects like this one highlight that including a variety of perspectives makes the information richer and more meaningful, allowing us to share different insights on important topics.” 

“I thought that you could just add any information on Wikipedia and that it was easy to put in false information on the platform but after seeking the rules and expectations Wikipedia has, I realized its sole focus is for others to share together on important topics. It is a great way for minds to come together.” 

“I had to make sure to provide information directly from the source without injecting anything I thought or bias into it, even subconsciously. It was genuinely a great learning experience in that regard. Even beyond learning about Wikipedia itself, this project serves as a great thought exercise to really probe your mind and contemplate how you process and regurgitate information.” 

“I would say I learned a lot more about the process of research than the actual research topic itself as it was pretty straightforward … The overall process of understanding the topic to finding credible sources that you have to make sure to insert very specifically according to the guidelines was definitely intensive.” 

“I definitely feel better suited for research projects in the future after this, as I feel I’ve learned the importance of adjusting your scope in research as well as prioritizing credible sources.” 

I asked my students if I should repeat this project the next time I taught the course. I fully expected the class would tell me it was a good one-time experiment. Instead, I was amazed to see 17 of the 18 respondents said Yes or Maybe to that survey question. 

“Being able to see edits and the community working firsthand, along with how deeply they look into edits and sources, has been a great way to understand how one of the largest websites in the world functions. It would be great if more students, and people in general, could see this firsthand and understand this… I will genuinely go forward having much more faith in Wikipedia, along with being able to check sources when I’m skeptical, and plan to tell others about this exact thing. Overall it might be worth further experimenting how to go about it, but I’d rate the project 8/10 and can certainly say I learned something important to apply to real life from it.” 

“I loved this project, it felt like we did more than just a final project. We did something to help more people and if we continue to be passionate about this type of work we can continue to work on it moving forward.” 

“The project was crucial in the improvement of our analytical and professional writing skills. I enjoyed [peer review] as it provided me with a strong foundation of suggestions I should always apply to my writing. It was awesome to contribute to academic content on the internet.” 

“This was out of my comfort zone for assignments since it took learning a whole new system … I felt hesitant to add information and contribute as much as I could because I was conscious of, ‘is this the wrong thing to add’ or ‘if I take this part out will affect how the reader understands the article,’ but overall the assignment was interesting and it took learning a topic to a whole new level.” 

The students in Citizen Nation at Worcester State University in Fall 2024 edited 19 articles. They added 9.65K new words (many of which are still there as of this writing), 115 new references (most from academic database references), and have gotten 288k article views. The possibilities – and results – of adapting my standard research project into a Wiki Education collaboration exceeded all my expectations this term. I’m sure I’ll be back, in the next U.S. election cycle. 

-Tona Hangen, Professor of History, Worcester State University

Explore Dr. Hangen’s syllabus

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 offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

I began teaching with the Wikipedia assignment in the spring of 2018. At the time, I sought an alternative to the standard term paper that had been, and likely remains, the staple of most college history courses. My motivation was to find an assignment that students would enjoy completing and that I would enjoy grading. Over my previous six years of university teaching, I developed a dread for grading term papers as it became apparent that most students either did not have the time or did not see the point in writing a well-researched argumentative paper. Moreover, I noticed that many of my students were developing bad habits in their rush to complete term papers, including committing to an argument before establishing a research question, cherry-picking sources that confirmed unfounded assumptions, and ignoring counterevidence. I desired an assignment that would reinforce the teaching of historical methodology and leverage the accessibility of the internet, allowing students to reach a broader audience, which I hoped would motivate them to take greater pride in their work.

After speaking with colleagues and searching the internet for ideas, I stumbled upon the Wiki Education website and found the Wikipedia assignment. Despite my lack of experience editing or authoring Wikipedia pages, I was drawn to the assignment because it facilitates experiential learning by requiring students to apply the knowledge acquired through course readings, lectures, and research to a public-facing project. In my US history survey course, for example, I use the Wikipedia assignment instead of a final paper to evaluate students’ ability to do the work of a historian by choosing a topic, developing a research question, selecting and evaluating sources, and writing a historical narrative. 

I also use the assignment to help students build social and professional skills applicable beyond the classroom. To promote peer collaboration in larger classes, I have students work in pairs. Admittedly, most groan when they hear this is a group project; however, by the end of the semester, they overwhelmingly express appreciation for their partner and the flexibility the assignment provides to capitalize on each person’s strengths. For example, those interested in computer programming and coding tend to enjoy learning about wikitext and the formatting aspects of the assignment. For others, conducting research, locating images, videos, and sound clips, or writing the text of the article is preferred. While I require them to work in pairs, students decide how to manage their workload by deciding who does what and evaluating each other’s performance at the end of the term.   

To facilitate student-teacher mentoring, I require students to meet with me throughout the semester to approve their topics and receive feedback on sources and drafts. These interactions help break down the reluctance and intimidation students feel towards interacting with authority figures and often lead to future opportunities to advise them about their degree progress, university resources, and career opportunities. To teach information and media literacy, I have students turn in an annotated bibliography halfway through the term. Although not a required part of the Wikipedia assignment, I find that it reinforces the dashboard’s trainings on evaluating sources according to the credibility of the author and publication. It also teaches students to pay as much, if not more, attention to the sources used in a publication than the text itself. 

I have used the Wikipedia assignment in thirteen courses over the past six years and have been thrilled by the results. Overall, my students have published 180 new articles, edited an additional 492 articles, and added 8,500 references to Wikipedia! Incredibly, their work has received over 13 million views as of spring 2024. But the best part is that my students admit they enjoy the assignment. 

Here are a few examples of what students appreciate about the Wikipedia assignment: 

“The Wikipedia project we had over the course of the semester was very effective in getting us all to participate in the learning process. It helped us to be more involved in research and in learning how to be historians.”

“I loved the Wikipedia project we worked on throughout the semester. We got to pick our own topic and I appreciated what it taught me about doing accurate historical research.”

“I loved the Wikipedia Assignment in this class and using our research skills to be able to put something useful out onto the internet.”

“The incorporation of making a Wikipedia article was the best way to actually be part of making and recording history.”

As reflected in the comments above, students relish the “hands-on” opportunity provided by the Wikipedia assignment to apply what they learn through a medium that allows them to create something that makes a public contribution beyond the classroom. And this is the primary reason why I continue to teach with Wikipedia; it encourages students to become more informed knowledge producers rather than passive consumers of information.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your courses? 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. 

What is feminist praxis? 

To start discussing potential answers to this question, we can first look up the word, praxis, in Wiktionary, and review its definitions. In English, praxis can mean “the practical application of any branch of learning,” but there are other uses and definitions. To dig further, we can check out the reference, which at the time of this writing takes us to the Oxford English Dictionary. From there, we can find out how meanings and uses have changed overtime and across subjects. We can also see how the word praxis in politics and philosophy has been used to mean the application of theories and ideas to sociopolitical activities. If you have access to multiple dictionaries or editions, we can compare different uses and definitions across sources. Now we are one step closer to discussing what feminist praxis may be.

Next, we can explore how the word praxis is used across different contexts via Wikipedia. We find out that the term is often used to describe “the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, realized, applied or put into practice.” If we recognize that praxis refers to a series of actions in relation to different ways of thinking, reasoning, and understanding, we can explore what that process may entail, how these processes change, and what their ultimate goals may be. We can also evaluate how this understanding emerged by examining the references listed at the bottom of the article and discuss relevant sources that could potentially be included. Then we can delve deeper into what feminism may look like in practice, how feminist ideas may evolve, and what ultimate aspirations of feminist praxis may entail. 

Could incorporating Wikipedia assignments be part of feminist praxis? 

Despite unequal access to digital technology, free online resources like Wiktionary and Wikipedia are remarkable for fostering critical conversations without paywalls. If you are a faculty working at a higher education institution, you likely have access to lots of research materials like books, peer-reviewed articles, journals, periodicals, databases, archives, and media through the university library. However, that is not the case for most people. Facts and information are expensive and not always accessible. I often joke with my students that I write papers that hardly anyone reads, and I am sure many faculty feel the same way. If you are not part of some established research ecosystem, most knowledge products are inaccessible, which makes it harder for the general public to learn new ideas and unfamiliar topics that are important for engaging in critical dialogues. 

While Wikipedia boasts an impressive amount of free content, it also suffers from significant gaps. One of the most frequently highlighted issues is gender bias on Wikipedia, largely due to the fact that men make up the majority of contributors. That is probably old news for many but given the geographical reach and the volume of traffic to Wikipedia, it’s crucial for educators to reflect critically on the knowledge production process and address this bias. Doing so will ensure that Wikipedia becomes a more reliable and comprehensive source of encyclopedic information. With the goal of fostering more informed and inclusive discussions about social issues, I started incorporating Wikipedia assignments into one of my graduate courses during the Fall of 2021, during the shift from virtual to in-person learning. 

I believe incorporating Wikipedia assignments can contribute to feminist praxis.

Wiki Education’s focus on social impact resonated with me during the public health emergency. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the rapid evolution of scientific knowledge, misinformation, and the exacerbation of disparities. I thought my students and I could contribute to equitable knowledge access by updating references, filling content gaps, and learning to navigate open collaboration. I share my experiences below.

My course is a discussion-based graduate course that meets weekly and requires students to submit an original analytical paper at the end of the semester. To encourage students to start their research early, I had them find, review, and improve existing Wikipedia articles related to their research interests rather than creating new entries. In my class, students learn about the terminology and concepts related to welfare states and poverty, various strategies for tackling social welfare issues, with the goal of interrogating the link between welfare regimes and gender inequality. Therefore, students have access to scholarly sources that could be referenced to improve existing articles related to welfare and poverty, while recognizing the role of gender. For example, a student noticed during initial review that an article on pandemic unemployment lacked data points on women, and another observed that an entry on red tape and administrative burden could benefit from additional references on equity implications. These observations shared during weekly class discussions underscore the importance of ongoing review and improvement to ensure that Wikipedia becomes a reliable and inclusive source of information.

I used Wikipedia assignments as part of the participation grade, recognizing that the contributions made by students may not always remain. Given Wikipedia’s open structure, I emphasized the importance of students completing training modules and exercises, and through completion, they earned participation points. Learning to evaluate Wikipedia articles, make revisions, and conduct peer reviews is just as valuable as sharing contributions publicly. Both activities help connect theory with practice. To encourage collaborative learning, I grouped students with similar research interests for peer reviews. On several occasions, students got to share and compare their references, which also helped them make progress on course paper. 

Because the final analytical paper carried more weight in the course grade, some students focused on making small but important edits, such as adding newer references and correcting grammatical errors to improve readability, but many went further. A student described the intersecting challenges faced by women, youth, and LGBTQ+ people who are experiencing homelessness in California and another expanded on the intricate ways welfare programs affect poverty. Many students also addressed racial bias and geographical disparity on Wikipedia by detailing the impact of Real ID Act on marginalized communities, incorporating government statistics published in Spanish to unpack machismo in Puerto Rico, adding new information on poverty in Indonesia, and providing additional details on public child care programs across countries. After addressing content gaps, students developed their own analytical papers to advance their original ideas and arguments, which were graded separately. 

I am still learning and experimenting with Wikipedia assignments. Navigating between Wiki Education dashboard and Wikipedia interface can be difficult, and instructors may need to carve out some class time to assist students having technical difficulties. Aligning Wiki Education training modules and exercises with course schedules also requires some trial and error, like moving deadlines, but I believe Wikipedia assignments have been useful for my students and I to think more critically about knowledge accessibility and implications of content gaps. Most importantly, incorporating Wikipedia assignments has given us the tangible opportunity to collectively experiment and discuss what it’s like to connect theory with practice in the era of social media. I am excited to continue this journey with my students, hopefully inspiring informed and inclusive dialogues about our future along the way. I am proud of my students for making a difference by contributing to more equitable knowledge access and engaging in feminist praxis. 

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your courses? 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.

It wasn’t very long ago that Wikipedia meant a website to look up information, a first stop in a learning journey. But now, it means so much more to my teaching partner and me. These days, the Wikipedia assignment means an unprecedented opportunity for our students to shape knowledge and influence culture – independent of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X, an opportunity to improve accessibility and increase authentic representation of marginalized communities. It means that students engage deeply with course content.

It wasn’t very long ago that my teaching partner and I hadn’t considered incorporating Wikipedia into our courses, and now, we cannot imagine teaching about social justice topics without the Wikipedia assignment – because it requires students to understand (and engage in) the politics of knowledge production, as Dr. Tracy Perkins pointed out when she introduced us to the idea of teaching with Wikipedia with the support of Wiki Education.

As persuasive as her presentation was, we weren’t fully convinced until we tried the Wikipedia assignment in our own class and saw our students appreciate the trainings and the practice exercises. Classroom conversations went from primarily practical information about course content to more theoretical discussions with students reminding each other that all assertions had to be cited, no new knowledge could be introduced during this stage. They truly embraced the Wiki Education ideals and standards. Facilitating meaningful discussion is one thing, but incorporating technology is quite another matter…

Truth be told, I put the “no logical” in “tech-no-logical”. So, the idea of using technology in an upper division class was intimidating. OK, it was a little worse than intimidating – I was pretty scared at first. But the Wiki Education team helped us set up our course and integrate the assignments into our syllabus. Dr. Perkins helped the students open accounts and navigate the dashboard and made sure that everyone was set up for success. Thanks to this support, we eased into the experience with our students leading the way.

When students selected articles, our primary requirement was that they research from a place of authenticity, meaning that students had to identify with some aspect of the information they were evaluating – the intent with this requirement was to amplify marginalized voices – not overwrite, overshadow or exclude them. Although we didn’t ask, students eagerly explained the connections to their topics, and these explanations increased classroom community and allowed students to appreciate each other’s areas of expertise.

Following those conversations, students’ confidence grew with each training exercise and every practice activity. When they posted their edits, we celebrated their scholarship and watched as the number of readers grew, slowly at first, and then exponentially by the end of that week! Students were elated by the readership statistics! We were excited for them, and so grateful to Dr. Perkins for sharing her experience and expertise with us.

However, as usual, there was an exception. One student’s work was removed almost immediately, and he was not surprised, because he said that he hadn’t put forth his best effort. That lesson was powerful for the class – they understood the reasons for posting work that had been cited, and they saw the swift consequences for posting work that did not meet this standard. When the work vanished so quickly, we reminded students that we were not grading the longevity of their edits. This debriefing conversation took us beyond the joy that the other students experienced when their work was being seen by so many readers. Together, we discussed the removal as a requisite measure of integrity.

And it was then that our students really grasped the magnitude of their edits – they understood that their work contributed to the greater good – a perfect segue into that next conversation about the politics of knowledge production, a topic we’d visited and revisited throughout the course. In this context, we asked students how members of marginalized communities continue to be underrepresented in these spaces (though there is progress in this area) and how cultural concerns can be erased and sometimes replaced. Each student provided accurate, relevant examples, and they mentioned the work of the vigilant editors who keep watch over the content, intending to remedy these issues. By the end of our course these students also considered themselves members of the Wiki Education team!

That first time teaching with the Wikipedia assignment made me a believer in the power of this process – my co-teacher and I learned a lot, but our students learned much more, and that is always our goal.

Thank you, Wiki Education, for providing these opportunities. Thank you, Dr. Perkins for your unwavering support, and thank you Helaine, Andrés, and Brianda for supporting the work of Wiki Education worldwide.

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 offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

I first taught with Wikipedia in Winter 2024 as part of my Geographies of Energy and Sustainability class. Perhaps this was a teensy bit ambitious, given that it was both my first time teaching this course, and my first year teaching at University of Washington with four other new class preps. (Seriously, what was I thinking?)

I was immediately drawn to the idea of a Wikipedia project as a form of authentic assessment, where students engage real-world tasks that require and inherently embed content knowledge, research and writing skills, and analytical thinking. Rather than writing a paper that will never again see the light of day after I grade it, students publish their work on the world’s foremost online encyclopedia. It’s hard to think of a more real-world task than that!

Since it was my first time teaching with Wikipedia, I wanted to keep my finger on the pulse of the class so I would know what questions were emerging in real time. I decided to implement a weekly project diary. Each week, students wrote an entry with suggested prompts calibrated to that week’s assigned Wiki Education trainings and exercises. I didn’t have to create these prompts out of whole cloth. Optional modules such as the Assignment blog, Journal, and Reflective essay assignments all had significant overlap with my project diary idea. These modules – as well as Discussion modules such as Thinking about sources and plagiarism, What’s a content gap?, and Thinking about Wikipedia – also include suggested topics and discussion questions. 

I ended up with ten weekly diary assignments, averaging 4-6 suggested prompts per entry. Students wrote 300-400 words per entry, using the diary as a space to reflect on the process of developing their Wikipedia article. The prompts were optional – students could write about whatever was interesting or bothering them, using the prompts if desired. (In my one exception, I required students to answer specific prompts relating to the Wikipedia article they chose for the project.)

Project Diary Outcomes

Functionally, the diaries served my intended purpose: students used them to let me know when they were having problems, if they were unsure about something, or if there was anything they wanted me to know. I was able to address these concerns either in a written comment, or – if many students had similar questions – in class. However, the project diary had a number of additional benefits.

Embedding Low-Stakes Writing

I am a big fan of low-stakes writing, or as Peter Elbow defines it, “frequent, informal assignments that make students spend time regularly reflecting in written language on what they are learning from discussions, readings, lectures, and their own thinking” (p. 7). Low-stakes writing is an evidence-based practice that, when thoughtfully designed and implemented, promotes student engagement, critical thinking, and metacognition; improves student writing, final grades, exam performance, and learning goals; and reduces student anxiety.

College students can feel intimidated by writing, particularly when it is limited to high-stakes, formal writing assignments. Given that the Wikipedia project already felt more high stakes than even a regular paper (it will be published! On Wikipedia! Where people will see it!), I wanted the diary entries to function as a safe, non-judgmental writing space for students. To alleviate grade-related anxiety, I graded diary entries based on completion and thoughtful engagement with the prompts, rather than categories typically graded in formal writing like content, grammar, or punctuation. 

Formative Feedback

The diaries also served as an excellent source of formative feedback, for both students and myself. In contrast to high-stakes summative evaluation, formative assessment provide ongoing, low-stakes feedback that students use to identify and address gaps in their knowledge. I encouraged students to use the diaries as a safe place to ask questions and explore their own knowledge gaps, knowing it wouldn’t negatively impact their grade (e.g. “Reflect on the process of writing in a ‘neutral voice’. Are you finding this aspect of writing for Wikipedia difficult?”).

The diaries were also an excellent source of formative feedback for myself. This happened in real time for the current class. For instance, if many students were expressing concern about a particular topic, I knew they needed more time devoted to that subject. The diaries also provided useful data for improving future versions of the project, particularly when I included prompts directly soliciting feedback (e.g. “What suggestions do you have for how the Wikipedia project could be improved in the future?”).

Metacognition Skill-building

Some prompts functioned well as an informal space where students could practice their metacognitive skills by critically reflecting on their own learning process, a key aspect of significant, long-term learning. I encouraged this process through prompts that asked students to reflect on how certain activities contributed to their learning (e.g. “Did the peer review process help you think about your own draft/edits in any way?”). 

An important consideration is that reflective writing does not inevitably result in high-quality student metacognition. It’s important to thoughtfully draft journal prompts and make sure they are well-integrated with the purpose of the assignment, the course learning goals, and the instructor’s own teaching style and philosophy. 

Student-Teacher Interaction

Diary entries became a significant site of back-and-forth conversation between the students and myself outside of the classroom. This was particularly helpful for keeping in touch with students who weren’t in class, as well as better communicating with more introverted students. (This approach also aligns with the Universal Design for Learning principles of incorporating multiple modalities for student participation and engagement.)

Some students began asking more directed questions in their diary entries, knowing I would answer them in the comments or our next class. Students asked questions ranging from the technical (e.g. “None of the citations or images carried over”) to the broader and more conceptual (“For my final draft, I wonder what kind of sources I should concentrate on?”). This information also guided my feedback on their article drafts.

Some students also used the diaries as a way to update me on other things going on in their lives, even though I didn’t include any prompts on those subjects. In some cases, students let me know about circumstances that they worried would impact their performance. I learned that my students had care-taking responsibilities, medical issues, full or part-time jobs, and concerns about other classes. I deeply valued the trust that these students showed in sharing such information with me, and provided additional support for them where possible.

A key choice that made the assignments work in this way was keeping students’ diary entries private. A different choice could be having students post to a discussion board or class blog, where entries are available to all students. While students would be less likely to open up about personal topics, they can see where other students might be struggling with similar issues as them, and can respond to one another. While each approach has different strengths, either method can yield excellent benefits. 

Future Considerations

Based on my experiences, reflections, and student feedback, I have some considerations for anyone interested in including a similar assignment while teaching with Wikipedia.

First, to achieve the full potential of low-stakes writing and formative feedback, it is important to actually read and respond to student work in a timely way. Even if you lack time to individually respond to every diary entry, leave time in class or send a message summarizing major themes and answering questions that come up.

Relatedly, project diaries shouldn’t replace in-class time for project-related work. This was a major area of formative feedback from my students: they wanted more in-class time to support the Wikipedia project. 

Finally, make sure to consider what you want the primary function of your diaries to be! If metacognition is your goal, incorporate prompts that specifically ask students to critically reflect on their learning process. If you just want a space for students to check in with you, you probably don’t need to bother with prompts that don’t relate to that week’s trainings and tasks. 

Not only did the Wikipedia project provide a meaningful and authentic assignment with real-world impact, but the project diary yielded important insights into my students’ processes and thinking throughout the class. The utility and value of this assignment were highly evident for both me and my students. It is an addition to the project that I will keep using and refining as I continue to teach with Wikipedia.

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 offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada. 

Back in January of this year, I took a three-week, six-hour introductory course on Wikidata through the nonprofit Wiki Education. Before the course’s start, I knew little to nothing about Wikidata, and I had several preconceived notions about the database and its uses before I began the course.

My first impression about Wikidata was that AI bots ran the system by sweeping Wikipedia pages and then used that information to create data sets under various pre-defined headings. In my conception, Wikidata’s information updated only when editors on Wikipedia changed or added pages. I thought of Wikidata as a closed system, and I thought the point of the course would be to learn how to run queries, so that we students could figure out how to access the data collected through Wikipedia. 

I remember asking my Wiki Education instructor about the role of AI in Wikidata, and he very pointedly responded that bots cannot program anything on their own. Instead, humans program Wikidata, and through this programming capability, both humans and machines can read and edit the system.

Wired writer Tom Simonite provided an example of this phenomenon in his article “Inside the Alexa Friendly World of Wikidata”:

“Some information is piped in automatically from other databases, as when biologists backed by the National Institutes of Health unleashed Wikidata bots to add details of all human and mouse genes and proteins.” 

This same article also discusses a further example, published in a paper by Amazon in 2018, of Wikidata teaching Alexa to recognize the pronunciation of song titles in different languages.

Both of these examples do a good job of illustrating another one of my misconceptions about Wikidata. As mentioned before, I thought the system was centralized and, apart from periodic updates, static. I did not conceive of the difference between data collected through documents (like Wikipedia) and a database with an open and flexible, relational communication system. 

What I discovered was vastly more interesting and complex than what I imagined. It was not a bot-driven data collecting system drawn from Wikipedia entries, but instead Wikidata was a communication system that can use multiple languages to add data. An editor in Beijing may enter information in Chinese, and that data will immediately be available in all the languages used by Wikidata. This feature allows for a self-structuring repository of data by users adding localized data from all over the world.

In 2013, Wikidata’s founder, Denny Vrandečić, wrote about the advantages that a database like Wikidata has over documents because “the information is stored centrally from where it can be accessed and reused independently and simultaneously by multiple websites without duplication.” In his article “The Rise of Wikidata,” Vrandečić made clear that Wikidata is not just a database for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. It can also be used “for many different services and applications, from reusing identifiers to facilitate data integration, providing labels for multilingual maps and services, to intelligent agents answering queries and using background knowledge” (Vrandecic, 2013, p. 90). 

This raises the question as to how Wikidata intelligently reads the information stored on its platform. My first misconception had to do with my belief that Wikidata was a flat collection of data based on Wikipedia’s entries. What I didn’t understand is that the crux of Wikidata’s intelligence comes from its ability to understand data in a relational way. As noted in “Familiar Wikidata: The Case for Building a Data Source We Can Trust,” Wikidata’s semantic structure is based on rules, also known as Wikidata ontology. According to this ontology, a person may have a relationship to a “born in” place, but a place cannot have a “born in” relationship to other entities. For example, Marie Curie can be born in Warsaw, but Warsaw cannot be born in Marie Curie. 

This knowledge-based structure is the key to understanding how Wikidata’s identifiers are used to connect to one another. In Wikidata’s logical grammar, two entities connect to one another by a relationship, also known as a “triple.”  It is this triple structure that creates the structural metadata that allows for intelligent mapping.  A fourth item, a citation, turns each triple into a “quad.” The fourth item is crucial to Wikidata’s ability to further arrange the data relationally, by making clear where the data in the triple originates, then arranging the data hierarchically based on its number of citations. 

Having access to the Wiki Education dashboard, I was able to see the edits of the other students taking the class. One student whom I’ll call Miguel was adding missing information about Uruguayan writers on Biblioteca Nacional de Uruguay’s catalog. As of this writing, he has completed more than 500 edits on this and other subjects, such as the classification of the word “anathema” as a religious concept. Two Dutch archivists were adding material on Dutch puppet theater companies in Amsterdam and Dutch women in politics. An Irish student was updating information on a twelfth century Irish vellum manuscript and an English translation of the Old Irish Táin Bó Cúailnge by Thomas Kinsella. 

What I saw when I perused the subjects of edits was exactly what the article “Much more than a mere technology” mentions, that is, that Wikidata is capable of linking local metadata with a network of global metadata. This capability makes Wikidata an attractive option for libraries wanting to “improve the global reach and access of their unique and prominent collectors and scholars” (Tharani, 2021). 

Multiple sources contend that Wikidata is, in fact, a centralized storage database, and yet the intelligence of Wikidata makes this description ring hollow. It is not a database like the old databases for documents. Its ontological structure allows for it to understand the syntax of data and arrange that information relationally into comprehensible language. Like the example of the biologists from the National Institutes of Health who programmed bots who programmed Wikidata bots to add genetic details about humans, mice and proteins to external databases, it can also be programmed for uses on external databases. Its linking capabilities make it possible for librarians and archivists from around the world to connect their metadata to a network of global metadata. Its multilingual abilities have a similar decentralizing effect, allowing users to create structured knowledge about their own cultures, histories, and literature in their own languages. 

If you are interested in taking a Wikidata course, visit Wiki Education’s course offerings page to get started.

Explore the upcoming Wikidata Institute, Wikidata Salon, and other opportunities to engage with Wikidata at learn.wikiedu.org.