{"id":609,"date":"2009-03-23T14:53:51","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T18:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=609"},"modified":"2009-03-23T14:53:51","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T18:53:51","slug":"wikipedia-a-scientific-and-educational-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2009\/03\/23\/wikipedia-a-scientific-and-educational-opportunity\/","title":{"rendered":"Wikipedia: A scientific and educational opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Emilio Bruna of the University of Florida wanted to assign students in his graduate seminar on plant -animal interactions something different than a term paper. \u00a0So he devised a novel plan that would help them learn some crucial concepts while writing concisely: rewriting Wikipedia entries. \u00a0I caught up with Emilio and student Kristine Callis, who is the first author of their resulting Trends in Ecology and Evolution paper<\/a>, to learn about their experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

What prompted the idea to edit Wikipedia entries in class?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Emilio Bruna:<\/strong> I was looking for an alternative to the standard research review paper for class, so I went onto Wikipedia.\u00a0 I noticed that although some of those entries are really good, the ones for the class I was teaching, which was plant-animal interactions, were really bad. And it\u2019s not the authors\u2019 fault \u2013 they wrote about what they were interested in and what they knew. But I thought it was an opportunity to do better. So at first I thought I\u2019d give it to them as an assignment.\u00a0 And then the idea came up to write a paper about the experience, and that\u2019s the product you can read in TREE.<\/span><\/p>\n

What was the assignment?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

EB:<\/strong> Students were working in groups of 3 or 4. Each group tackled a different Wikipedia entry: frugivory, herbivory, pollination, granivory and seed dispersal. The groups had to critique the entry, rewrite it, and upload the changes. Some groups had an easier time than others, depending on the critiques of other authors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kristine Callis:<\/strong> All of us were familiar with Wikipedia, but we\u2019d been told in the past, since most of us are teaching assistants, that you can\u2019t really use Wikipedia because you don\u2019t know how good the content is. By doing this project we discovered instead that there weren\u2019t a lot of things in the entries that were outright wrong, but there were a lot of things that were either misleading or left out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Or, in some cases, given too much treatment?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

KC:<\/strong> Definitely. We discovered that most entries seemed to have an anthropomorphic spin. The human aspect is important, of course, but in many cases it went too far. For example, the entry for the term \u201cfrugivore\u201d spent a lot of time talking about humans who eat only fruit.<\/span><\/p>\n

EB:<\/strong> That was everyone\u2019s favorite. The fruitarians were a real highlight for us.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Were other authors resistant to your changes?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

KC:<\/strong> At first we didn\u2019t know how the culture of Wikipedia worked.\u00a0 One group just uploaded their changes directly, so another author just reverted their changes back to the old entry. What we didn\u2019t realize is that there is a culture in uploading things that you have to obey. Posts are usually discussed before getting posted because you get experts in all kinds of fields. It\u2019s a give-and-take, and you work around those issues to make the best out of the situation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why don\u2019t you think more scientists contribute to Wikipedia?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

EB:<\/strong> I know exactly why they don\u2019t contribute. It\u2019s because they don\u2019t get any credit for it. We get credit for certain things to get promoted in science, and writing Wikipedia entries isn\u2019t one of them.\u00a0 We work on an incentive system, and the incentive isn\u2019t there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Touch\u00e9. What are some incentives that could be added?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

EB:<\/strong> At a university, the ways to get credit would enhance your publication record, enhance your teaching program, and \u2014 if you\u2019re at a land-grant university \u2014 enhance your extension program.\u00a0 Incorporating revision of Wikipedia entries into classes is a really creative way to get these entries revised. Students are on the cutting edge in terms of knowledge of the literature and they can further practice their writing by editing entries. Assigning them as projects hits all those goals we have as teachers: writing, critical thinking, and revisions of the literature. And it als<\/span>o gets that quality of thinking and writing out there for everyone else to see.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

At least one journal is even requiring that their authors edit Wikipedia entries.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

EB:<\/strong> The journal RNA News has a category of papers in which they publish descriptions of new types of RNA. If you submit to this category, then you also have to create a Wikipedia entry in which you describe that type of RNA. But on the whole, scientific professional societies can go beyond requiring it for publication in their journals.\u00a0 All societies have a service and outreach component to them where scientists interface with the public. This fits right into that category of a service to your profession.\u00a0 Universities are very interested in using the web and new media in their teaching, so this is also something faculty can highlight as a way of showing off that they\u2019re thinking about ways to use technology creatively in their classrooms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kristine, as a student, what was your most valuable experience with this project?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

KC:<\/strong> We were much more motivated to do a good job than if we were just turning this assignment in to a professor. This was going to go out to everybody, so we wanted to triple-check everything and make sure that it was exactly the way that we wanted it. If you\u2019re just doing a term paper, sure, you do a good job, but it only influences your reputation with the professor. Not only did we learn something, but we also gave back to society. Also, we didn\u2019t just learn how to publish, but we learned how to publish collaboratively. It\u2019s very easy when there are just two or three authors on a paper, but \u2026how many did we have, twelve authors?<\/span><\/p>\n

EB:<\/strong> Fourteen. There were fourteen student authors on the paper, besides me.<\/span><\/p>\n

KC: <\/strong> It\u2019s a whole new ball game when you have fifteen different authors trying to agree on things.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, given your experience, how would you convince scientists that they should contribute to Wikipedia?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

KC:<\/strong> No matter where you publish, even if you\u2019re publishing in Science or Nature, you\u2019re not getting your research out to as many people as you will through Wikipedia. And it\u2019s so important today because so much of the general public doesn\u2019t understand or appreciate the science that goes on. Disseminating knowledge can really help motivate more appreciation and more funding for the sciences.\u00a0 If we continue to publish only in journals that scientists read, the public will continue to be in the dark.<\/span><\/p>\n

EB:<\/strong> It\u2019s a way to do the things that we want to do as teachers while also doing the things that our universities want us to do for the public.<\/span><\/p>\n

To access the TREE paper, contact Emilio Bruna at embruna at ufl dot edu<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Callis, K., Christ, L., Resasco, J., Armitage, D., Ash, J., Caughlin, T., Clemmensen, S., Copeland, S., Fullman, T., Lynch, R., Olson, C., Pruner, R., Vieira-Neto, E., West-Singh, R., & Bruna, E. (2009). Improving Wikipedia: educational opportunity and professional responsibility Trends in Ecology & Evolution<\/span> DOI: 10.1016\/j.tree.2009.01.003<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emilio Bruna of the University of Florida wanted to assign students in his graduate seminar on plant -animal interactions something different than a term paper. \u00a0So he devised a novel plan that would help them learn some crucial concepts while writing concisely: rewriting Wikipedia entries. \u00a0I caught up with Emilio and student Kristine Callis, who is the first author of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,2,49,48],"tags":[96,122,174,175],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology-education","category-research","category-scholarship","category-ecology-and-society","tag-education","tag-peer-review","tag-pollination","tag-wikipedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}