Presented by Dr Thomas Shafee (Postdoctoral Fellow, La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science – LIMS) at the Research Support Community Day 2018 Wikimedia Australia undertakes outreach activities, develops resources and builds systems that empower and engage people to collect, share and promote free cultural works. Partnerships have included towns such as Fremantle, W.A. and organisations such as the Australian War Memorial. Dr Thomas Shafee gave an overview of Wikimedia Australia and outlined recent and forthcoming activities.

1. WIKIMEDIA AUSTRALIA
A COLLABORATIVE COMMUNITY
WHY AND HOW TO GET INVOLVED IN COLLABORATIONS WITH WIKIPEDIA
DR THOMAS SHAFEE
CC BY 4.0

2. MY
BACKGROUND
2Images: Cruccone (Wikimedia commons), LIMS website
‐ 19,000 edits
Specialist topics (e.g Catalytic triad)
Broad topics (e.g. Enzyme, Gene)
Created new (e.g Sequence space)
‐ 280 images
‐ Editor for PLOS Genetics and
WikiJournal of Medicine
WIKPDEIAN
USERNAME: EVOLUTION AND EVOLVABILITY
Evolvability of a Viral
Protease
Experimental Evolution of
Catalysis, Robustness and
Evolvability
PHD
Novel sequence-analysis
techniques for small,
cysteine-rich antimicrobial
proteins
Understand their evolution
to engineer their function
POSTDOC
CAMBRIDGE
LIMS

3. WIKIPEDIA
A KEY TOOL ROUTE OF INFORMATION DISSEMINATION
3

4. 0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
A BRIEF HISTORY
‐ 2001 began
‐ 2007 editing peak
But poor accuracy
Stricter standards lead
to fall-off in editors
‐ 2015 resurgence
Concerted recruitment
Easier editing tools
First year since 2007
with editor growth
‐ In 295 languages
‐ 5th busiest website
4Data: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm
Stricter standards
Activeeditors*
Articles
Recruitment
Easier editing tools
* >100 edits per month
0
1,000,000
2,000,000
3,000,000
4,000,000
5,000,000
6,000,000

5. WHO READS WIKIPEDIA?
5
Thesis
1-10
Median
Journal
Paper
800
Top 5%
Journal
Paper
3,000
Median Wikipedia page
10,000 pa
Top 5% Wikipedia page
1,000,000 pa

6. WHO READS WIKIPEDIA’S MEDICAL CONTENT?
6
Fox S, Jones S. Pew Internet. 2009 | Hughes B, Joshi I, Lemonde H, Wareham J. Int J Med Inform 2009 Oct;78(10):645-655 | Allahwala UK, Nadkarni A,
Sebaratnam DF. Med Teach 2013 Apr;35(4):337 | Nutzung von Social-Media-Diensten in der Wissenschaft 2017 Goportis – Leibniz-Bibliotheksverbund
General
public
Practicing
doctors
Medical
students
Research
scientists

7. ARTICLE QUALITY:
INTERNAL REVIEW
‐ Articles are rated
Importance
Quality
‐ Top two quality
ratings
Promoted by review
Status can also be
revoked by review
‐ Status
Displayed on talk page
7https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Medicine_articles_by_quality_statistics
Top High Mid Low
FA 1199 1847 1737 1100
GA 2119 4847 9477 10348
B 12222 23130 35423 28494
C 10488 30487 68122 94937
Start 17343 77119 309766 808221
Stub 4239 30919 228711 1895512
Importance
Quality
Pseudo
peer-reviewed

8. ARTICLE QUALITY:
EXTERNAL REVIEW
‐ Quality comparable to encyclopedia Britannica even back in 2005
‐ Accuracy varies by topic, but broad trends:
Inconsistent coverage
Missing / out of date information
Missing illustration
Difficult readability
‐ Accuracy has immediate, real-world impact
Internet medical data influences the healthcare decisions of >50% of readers
Many articles are read a million times per year
‐ Yet is has been consistently difficult to engage academics,
experts and health professionals
8Nature 2005 438:900 | S Fox, M Duggan Pew internet 2013

9. SISTER PROJECTS
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, WIKIDATA, WIKIJOURNALS

10. A MASSIVE MEDIA REPOSITORY
‐ Multimedia file repository
Images
Video
Sound
‐ Public domain / Freely-licensed
Creative commons licenses
‐ Content scope
Educational
Informative
Instructional
‐ Like all Wikimedia projects, free and volunteer-run
10

11. THE FUTURE OF DATA
‐ Free, open, structured knowledge base
‐ Humans and machine readable and editable
Multilingual, queryable
‐ Standardised, centralised, highly interlinked
Statements, sources, and connections to other databases
Item Property Value
Q42 P69 Q691283
Douglas Adams educated at St John's College

12. BRIDGING THE
ACADEMIC DIVIDE
12
JOURNAL FIRST
‐ Content published
into both Wikipedia
and academic
corpus
Stable, citable, peer-
reviewed version with
the credibility of a
scholarly journal
Living version with
extreme impact of
Wikipedia

13. DUAL-PUBLISHING
MODELS
13
WIKIPEDIA FIRST
‐ Content published
into both Wikipedia
and academic
corpus
Stable, citable, peer-
reviewed version with
the credibility of a
scholarly journal
Living version with
extreme impact of
Wikipedia

14. DUAL-PUBLISHING
MODELS
14
PARALLEL
‐ Content published
into both Wikipedia
and academic
corpus
Stable, citable, peer-
reviewed version with
the credibility of a
scholarly journal
Living version with
extreme impact of
Wikipedia

15. ACADEMIC AND WIKIPEDIC VERSIONS
15
This article has been published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS
Computational Biology. Click to view the published version

16. WHY AND HOW TO
COLLABORATE
TEAMING UP WITH EXPERIENCED EXPERTS
1

17. WHY EDIT WIKIMEDIA PROJECTS?
SELFLESS SELFISH
‐ The noble cause of free
information
‐ Giving back to a resource you’ve
benefitted from
‐ Expert input on difficult topics
‐ Effective public engagement
‐ Maximise use of the writing and
images that you’ve already done
‐ Ensure your field is thoroughly
and accurately represented
First google hit for most topics
(Students, Journalists, Reviewers,
Policymakers)
‐ Very large exposure
‐ Improve non-specialist writing
17

18. PROJECT AND COLLABORATION FORMATS
Institutional
/ Long-term
Wikipedian in Residence
Formal, ongoing partnerships
Repeating meetups
Edit-a-thons / Wikibombs
Treasurehunts (content, images, citations)
Edit training (Wikipedia, Wikidata, Commons)
Individual
/ Short-term

19. AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH PROJECTS
‐ Wikimedia.org.au
Advice and help
Editi training
Access to community and grants
‐ Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant Projects
UQ: History of Australian Paralympics Project + edit training (3yr)
Curtin & UWA: Noongarpedia (ongoing)
‐ Independent projects
Sydney: Wiki in Higher Ed conference + SUP edit-a-thons
Melbourne: ResearcHERs edit-a-thon + Florey Institute edit-a-thon
Monash: Women, Wikipedia, and edit-a-thon
La Trobe: Edit training + Monthly writing meetups

20. INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS
‐ Wikipedia in Education
Wikipedia editing as part of assessed student coursework
‐ GLAMWiki
Documentation, Digitisation, Reference hunting, Digital integration
‐ WikiJournals
Academic journals that dual-publish 1) stable version of record, 2) into Wikipedia
‐ ORCID integration
‐ WikiCite
‐ 1Lib1Ref

21. WHAT DOES THE
FUTURE HOLD?
AND WHAT SHOULD IT?
2

22. THE FUTURE OF CONTRIBUTION
INDIVIDUAL SOCIETAL
‐ Encourage new editors to overcome
activation energy to make their first edit
‐ Deliberate recruitment to improve
diversity (demographics, expertise, etc)
‐ Editing Wikipedia needs to be seen as
a valuable use of time
‐ Formal recognition of contribution by
professional bodies
22
Shafee, T; Masukume, G; Kipersztok, L; Das, D; Häggström, M; Heilman, J. (2017). “The evolution of Wikipedia’s medical content: past, present and
future“. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 71 (10).
PHYSICAL ORGANISATIONAL
‐ Continue advancement of tools and
interface to make editing easier
‐ Increase automation to assist editors
‐ Encouraging institutions to support
partnerships and collaborations
‐ Consolidating Wikipedia’s policies to
avoid putting off new users by early
mistakes

23. 23
Contact WikiMedia Australia
Website Wikimedia.org.au
Email Contact@Wikimedia.org.au
Contact me
Email Thomas.Shafee@gmail.com
ResearchGate Thomas Shafee
LinkedIn Thomas Shafee
Wikipedia user Search “User:Tshafee”
Journals
WikiJournal of Medicine WikiJMed.org
WikiJournal of Science WikiJSci.org
WikiJournal of Humanities WikiJHum.org (pending)
PLOS TopicPagesWiki.plos.org