Opening keynote at the conference "Enhancing the voice of science on Wikipedia: How universities can collaborate with the online encyclopedia in science communication," 9–11 April 2024, University of Innsbruck, Austria

1. SCIENCE (COMMUNICATION) AND WIKIPEDIA
Potentials and Pitfalls
Leonhard Dobusch
Enhancing the voice of science on Wikipedia:
How universities can collaborate with the online encyclopedia in science communication
April 9, 2024, Innsbruck

2. How 'scienti
fi
c' is Wikipedia?

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Encyclopedia&oldid=1217222872
An encyclopedia … is a
compendium providing
summaries of knowledge
Wikipedia article on 'Encyclopedia'
“

4. Encyclopedia is (also)
a genre of scholarly text
(predating science
as we know it today)
Screenshot: https://www.e-elgar.com/products/encyclopedia/ (April 8, 2024)

5. Association of
Inclusionist
Wikipedians
Association of
Deletionist
Wikipedians
Source: notabilia.net

6. Association of
Inclusionist
Wikipedians
Association of
Deletionist
Wikipedians
Source: notabilia.net

7. Wikipedia is (much) more than
a traditional encyclopedia

8. Source: https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/
0
500.000
1.000.000
1.500.000
2.000.000
2.500.000
01.02.22
02.02.22
03.02.22
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21.03.22
Pageviews of English and Russian Wikipedia Pages
of Ukraine and of its Russian Invasion in 2022
Ukraine (en.wp) 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (en.wp)
Ukraine (ru.wp) 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (ru.wp)
Wikipedia is a
news source with
real-time updates

9. Screenshot: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nestl%C3%A9&oldid=1217902456
the (most important)
business card

10. Core part of Wikimedia’s
free knowledge ecosystem

11. How important is science for Wikipedia?

12. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reliable_sources&oldid=1217325082
Wikipedia articles should be
based on reliable, published
sources Wikipedia:Reliable sources
“

13. How important is Wikipedia for Science?

14. Real researchers never using Wikipedia,
please stand up!

15. Figure 5 Distribution of US Supreme Court cases added to Wikipedia over time
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4327890
We
fi
nd that summarizing
Irish Supreme Court cases on
Wikipedia increases their
citation in subsequent legal
judgments Thompson et al. (2024)
“
Scholarly Impact through the Wikipedia Filter

16. https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/asi.23687
Controlling for
fi
eld and
impact factor, the odds that an
open access journal is
referenced on the English
Wikipedia are 47% higher
compared to paywall
journals.
Teplitskyi et al. (2016)
“
Open Access Wikipedia
nal-
m a
the
nals
edia
are
eas-
nce
tors
med
tion
tion
les:
pen
ub-
nd-
pen
ship
per-
hen
yzes
disciplines by percent_cited does not engender a simple
explanation. For example, such an ordering does not
appear correlated with traditional distinctions like hard
versus soft science, or basic versus applied. This finding
is echoed by Nielsen (2007), who found that “computer
and Internet-related journals do not get as many
000
000
000
048
FIG. 5. Observed (dots) and predicted (solid lines) English Wikipedia
references. Red squares designate OA journals. The marker size is pro-
portional to the number of articles the journal published.
NFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—September 2017 2121
08/04/2024].
See
the
Terms
and
Conditions
(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions)
on
Wiley
Online
Library
for
rules
of
use;
OA
articles
are
governed
by
the
applicable
Creative
Commons

17. How important is Wikipedia for our common knowledge?

18. Most popular websites worldwide
(as of November 2023, by total visits, in billions)
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201880/most-visited-websites-worldwide/

19. Most popular websites worldwide
(as of November 2023, by total visits, in billions)
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201880/most-visited-websites-worldwide/

20. https://openfuture.eu/blog/how-wikipedia-can-shape-the-future-of-ai/
Wikipedia is the second largest content source
used in C4, a training dataset built by Google by
scraping 15 million web pages. It is also one of the
primary data sources for the open-source language
modeling dataset, the Pile. And according to
researchers, it is particularly relevant for
improving these models. Tarkowski (2023)
“
(The obligatory AI slide)

21. Wikipedia Knowledge is…
…negotiated
…always preliminary
…never certain
…a constant reminder
that any kind of
knowledge is…

22. Which brings us to:
Science Communication

23. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Science_communication&oldid=1193574963#cite_note-1
Science communication encompasses a wide range
of activities that connect science and society.
Gascoigne et al. (2020) as
cited in Wikipedia (2024)
“
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Science-Comunication-Overview-FabioCrameri.png, CC BY-SA 4.0

24. practitioner’s talks, social
media, video abstracts, …
Consulting and supporting
direct communication of
research
fi
ndings to non-
scholarly audiences
Connecting with and
translating research
fi
ndings for non-scholarly
audiences, incl. journalists
science journalism, press
releases, interview training, …

25. How does Wikipedia
fi
t in there?

26. The Case of ZDF Terra X

31. …

32. ZDF Terra X Videos in Wikipedia (Views/Month)
Total
Views
Views/Video
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
0
500.000
1.000.000
1.500.000
2.000.000
Jan.
2020
Feb.
2020
März
2020
Apr.
2020
Mai
2020
Juni
2020
Juli
2020
Aug.
2020
Sept.
2020
Okt.
2020
Nov.
2020
Dez.
2020
Jan.
2021
Feb.
2021
März
2021
Apr.
2021
Mai
2021
Juni
2021
Juli
2021
Aug.
2021
Sept.
2021
Views/Video (linke Skala) Total Views/Video (rechte Skala)
ZDF Terra X-Videos in Wikipedia (Views/Monat)
Views/video (left scale) Total views/video (right scale)

33. What are potentials when
science communication meets Wikipedia?

34. …reach new audiences
…increase citation metrics
…improve/update Wikipedia articles
…
fi
nally
fi
nd a stage for explainer videos to be seen
Plenty of Potential to…

35. What are the pitfalls?

36. Tough,
but solvable
Tough,
unsolvable
What are the pitfalls?

37. Solvable: Wikipedia Competence Gap
…Wikipedia is different
…many, many rules
…written and unwritten

38. Solvable: Wikipedia-compatible licensing
Creative Commons
Share without clearing rights
Attribution Share Alike Non commercial No derivatives

39. Solvable: Wikipedia-compatible licensing
Attribution Share Alike Non commercial No derivatives
Compatible
with Wikipedia

40. Unsolvable:
(to what degree) is
science communication
PR?

41. The traditional Wikipedia approach:
radical transparency

42. Unsolvable:
the volunteer challenge
If your group has nine helpful
and polite members, and one
rude, sexist, loud member,
most women are going to
continue to stay away because
of that one member
“
Valeria Aurora (2002)
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/
Quelle: David Lerner, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_troll.jpg, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

43. Is it worth it?

44. Wikipedia, with all its
fl
aws, is an emancipatory
project in the tradition of
the Enlightenment.
Even Elon Musk cannot
buy it.
And I think that’s beautiful.

45. KONTAKT
E-Mail:
Leonhard.Dobusch@uibk.ac.at
Social:
Mastodon: @leonido / Twitter: @leonidobusch
Homepages:
bit.ly/LD-UIBK // www.dobusch.net
Forschungsblogs:
governancexborders.com // osconjunction.net