User:Daniel Mietchen/Talks/Ecological knowledge in the open knowledge ecosystem around Wikipedia

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About[edit]

This page assists a workshop given on 11 September 2023 at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) as part of the annual meeting of the GfÖ - The Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland taking place in Leipzig from 11-16 September 2023.

Logistics[edit]

Schedule[edit]

  • 8:30 Registration & Welcome
  • 9:00 Introduction to the workshop
    • some of our interests:
      • species pages
      • biographies of ecologists
      • tropical plants
      • multiple languages
      • flies
      • open data, FAIR data, graph databases
      • theoretical ecology
  • 9:15 Introduction to Wikipedia & the ecosystem around it
  • 9:45 Overview of ecology coverage in the Wikipedia ecosystem
  • 10:15 WikiProject Invasion biology
  • 10:30 Coffee break
  • 10:50 Hands-on demo of community curation workflows
  • 11:20 Discussion of priorities for future on-wiki activities around ecology
  • 11:50 Wrap-up
  • 12:00 Lunch foyer ground floor
  • Discussion is invited throughout.

Wikimedia projects[edit]

Wikimedia logo family complete-2022
Wikimedia logo family complete-2022
An ecosystem of about 1000 wikis

Wikipedia[edit]

Screenshot of Wikipedia.org landing page on 2023-04-05 21-42-04
Screenshot of Wikipedia.org landing page on 2023-04-05 21-42-04

Wikipedia is available in over 300 languages, together getting multiple billions of monthly page views.

Wikimedia Commons[edit]

Knowledge belongs to all of us. 2030 Wikimedia
Knowledge belongs to all of us. 2030 Wikimedia
Over 90 million reusably licensed media files

Wikidata[edit]

Screenshot of Wikidata homepage as of 5 April 2023
Screenshot of Wikidata homepage as of 5 April 2023

Structured data about more than 100 million entities.

Other Wikimedia projects[edit]

Wikimedia logo family 2021 with SARS-CoV-2 virus
Wikimedia logo family 2021 with SARS-CoV-2 virus

An example of how each of these projects has its own ways of sharing knowledge around a topic

The landscape around Wikimedia[edit]

Strategy Graphic - For collaborative editing
Strategy Graphic - For collaborative editing
Wikimedia's strategic direction:

"By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us."

Wikimedia for research[edit]

Wikimedia about research[edit]

Screenshot of the article January–March 2023 in science on the English Wikipedia as of 2023-07-10
Screenshot of the article January–March 2023 in science on the English Wikipedia as of 2023-07-10

Wikimedia resources relevant for research[edit]

Screenshot of Scholia topic profile for peatland as of 2023-07-10
Screenshot of Scholia topic profile for peatland as of 2023-07-10

Scholia provides about 30 types of scholarly profiles, all based on Wikidata (e.g. a person or institution)

Wikimedia for Ecology[edit]

Screenshot of the Wikimedia Commons category Bogs as of 2023-07-10
Screenshot of the Wikimedia Commons category Bogs as of 2023-07-10

Categories, infoboxes, identifiers, links

Media files[edit]

Carbon cycle-cute diagram
Carbon cycle-cute diagram

A carbon cycle diagram available in 18 languages

Articles[edit]

Screenshot of Citation Hunt for Bogs as of 2023-07-10
Screenshot of Citation Hunt for Bogs as of 2023-07-10

Tools like Citation Hunt assist in improving verifiability.

Structured data[edit]

Genera by number of species known to contain indolic scaffolds as of 2023-04-06
Genera by number of species known to contain indolic scaffolds as of 2023-04-06

Structured data from different domains can be queried.

Statistics[edit]

Pageviews for the article Moor on the German Wikipedia from 2015-2023
Pageviews for the article Moor on the German Wikipedia from 2015-2023

Pageviews for the article Moor on the German Wikipedia from 2015-2023. See also cross-language stats.

Opportunities for further interactions[edit]

Motivation[edit]

  • Wikimedia projects are already widely used in research and many other contexts
  • Reuse on Wikimedia projects is a great way to demonstrate Reusability of research in the FAIR sense
  • Wikimedia contributions can be integrated with educational activities
  • Five ways academics can contribute to Wikipedia

Further reading[edit]

Basic principles of Wikimedia projects[edit]

Five pillars of Wikipedia + three core content policies
Five pillars of Wikipedia + three core content policies

Some key principles that the ecosystem is built on

Five pillars of Wikipedia[edit]

  • WP:5P1 Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
  • WP:5P2 Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view
  • WP:5P3 Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute
  • WP:5P4 Wikipedia's editors should treat each other with respect and civility
  • WP:5P5 Wikipedia has no firm rules

Core content policies[edit]

Screenshot of the Core content policies page on the English Wikipedia as of 2023-04-06
Screenshot of the Core content policies page on the English Wikipedia as of 2023-04-06

Core content policies on the English Wikipedia; the other wikis have similar ones.

Contributing to Wikimedia projects[edit]

Listen to Wikipedia
Listen to Wikipedia

Listen to the edit stream:
multiple Wikipedias, Wikidata, both, recording

Contributing to Wikidata[edit]

Wikidata items map with difference, India, October 2018 to May 2019
Wikidata items map with difference, India, October 2018 to May 2019

Geolocated Wikidata items, with highlighting of changes between October 2018 and May 2019

Contributing to Wikimedia Commons[edit]

Sphagnum denticulatum at Sphagnum cultivation at Universität Greifswald 2023-06-11 03
Sphagnum denticulatum at Sphagnum cultivation at Universität Greifswald 2023-06-11 03
An image from the wiki excursion to the Greifswald Moor Center in June 2023. See here for usage overview.

Contributing to Wikipedia[edit]

WikiProject Climate change - 1000 most popular articles in February 2023
WikiProject Climate change - 1000 most popular articles in February 2023

There is always room for improvement, and there are initiatives like WikiProject Climate Change or #365climateedits to address that.

Issues with contributing to Wikimedia projects[edit]

What I wonder is why professors don't curate [pages on] Wikipedia and add course materials and open access sections of textbooks, much of which they post online anyways. We aren't really seeing the potential that you would hope for with all of the Web 2.0 tools out there. We aren't seeing the academic community take advantage of them as much as other subsets of the community. — David Lipman (2010)

Wikifying biogeosciences[edit]

Wikidata-climate-change-logo
Wikidata-climate-change-logo

Logo of Wikidata's WikiProject Climate Change

Increase opportunities to participate in the research process[edit]

Smithsonian FossiLab at the National Museum of Natural History with fossil preparators being observed by museum visitors - IMG 20190728 153249
Smithsonian FossiLab at the National Museum of Natural History with fossil preparators being observed by museum visitors - IMG 20190728 153249

In the FossiLab at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, citizen scientists prepare fossils in an open-science fashion, with the public invited to observe.

Contextualizing invasion biology[edit]

Invasion biology in a broader context that includes restoration ecology, urban ecology and freshwater ecology - Wikidata Query Service screenshot from 2023-04-06 05-52-12 (cropped)
Invasion biology in a broader context that includes restoration ecology, urban ecology and freshwater ecology - Wikidata Query Service screenshot from 2023-04-06 05-52-12 (cropped)

A Wikidata query for topics related to invasion biology

Opening up ecological research institutions[edit]

Opening up climate communication[edit]

TDWG 2022 - INT19 94347 hegde - Unpacking IPCC and IPBES Reports

Unpacking IPCC and IPBES Reports (2022) — non-open licensing and encapsulation in PDFs are an obstacle to reuse of images or citation information
Assessment on Peatlands, Biodiversity, and Climate Change

Wiki99[edit]

Screenshot of the Wiki99 page for chemistry as of 2023-04-06
Screenshot of the Wiki99 page for chemistry as of 2023-04-06

Wiki99 for chemistry. What about doing one for ecology?

Linking arts and sciences[edit]

Paintings depicting wetlands - screenshot of the Wikidata Query Service as of 2023-07-10
Paintings depicting wetlands - screenshot of the Wikidata Query Service as of 2023-07-10

Paintings depicting wetlands

Hands-on[edit]

Thanks[edit]

Send-thanks1
Send-thanks1
What if we could more easily thank those who create and maintain the resources we use?

Abstract[edit]

Goals[edit]

The goal of this session is fourfold: (i) to provide participants with an overview of the coverage of ecological topics in Wikipedia and its sister sites like Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource and Wikispecies (ii) outline the Wikimedia community processes behind the generation and curation of that content (iii) explore how the Wikimedia workflows interact with those of the community of ecological researchers and practicioners (iv) highlight potential for further interactions.

Background[edit]

This workshop explores existing and potential interactions between ecological research and education on the one hand and the Wikimedia ecosystem on the other. This ecosystem - which includes sites like Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and their respective communities and workflows - represents a sociotechnical platform providing a vast and continuously curated repository of openly accessible knowledge and reusable materials on a wide range of topics, including many that are relevant for ecological research. This resource is leveraged at the scale of billions of monthly direct pageviews and in many more indirect ways, e.g. via search engines or large language models.

Focus[edit]

The workshop begins by providing a general overview of the Wikimedia ecosystem, its structure, and its interactions with and impact on scientific communication. We will then explore how ecology and ecological research are represented and how ecology-related communities can engage with the Wikimedia ecosystem, including reviewing Wikipedia articles, uploading scientific images or media files to Wikimedia Commons, utilizing Wikidata to connect and visualize reference data across knowledge domains or exploring open-science workflows taking place on Wikimedia infrastructures.

Pros and cons[edit]

We will also discuss the benefits of engaging with the Wikimedia ecosystem, including increasing the visibility and impact of ecological research, improving public understanding of scientific concepts, scientific contributions to societal discourse, and promoting collaboration and networking among scientists as well as between them and others. Additionally, we will cover some of the challenges and potential pitfalls of engaging with the Wikimedia ecosystem, such as the different writing styles and attribution mechanisms and the potential for conflicts of interest, bias and misinformation, along with mechanisms for addressing such issues.

Related talks[edit]

Back to start[edit]