Do try this at home: explorations in Open Knowledge

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Alasdair Watson

This is the first in our series of ‘how to’ blog posts from the Bodleian Libraries’ Wikimedian in Residence Martin Poulter. The posts accompany his Open Knowledge Ambassador series. There are still two sessions left – sign up at https://courses.it.ox.ac.uk/detail/ENLE4 and https://courses.it.ox.ac.uk/detail/ENLE3!

This week, I ran the second workshop in the four-part Open Knowledge Ambassador series. In the appropriately scholarly surroundings of the the Bodleian Library’s Centre for Digital Scholarship, we took a look into the underbelly of Wikipedia that the great majority of its readers never see.

It’s apt to be running the course now. At the end of January, a journal editorial warning of ‘research parasites’ (who analyse data they didn’t themselves collect) prompted an outraged but hilarious response. Hundreds of scientists used the #ResearchParasites and #IAmAResearchParasite hashtags on social media to defend the sharing and checking of research data. Climate scientists ‘confessed’ to not having personally launched their satellites into space, and Isaac Newton was sarcastically branded a ‘parasite’ for his remark that he saw far by standing on the shoulders of giants. It was a great example of the tension between those who think knowledge benefits from an open process, and those who want that process enclosed.

Each workshop is 1.5 hours, and the emphasis on active learning means that a lot of this is spent in tasks in which we dig into Wikipedia and related sites or tools, and discuss what we find. This is a fun way for me to share my insider knowledge, and for participants to explore resources that are relevant to their own interests.

Working with open resources has its headaches. This week’s starting point was the WikiProject Directory: an index of projects to improve specific subject areas of Wikipedia. When I brought the directory up on screen, it had just been massively vandalised, so I had to begin the presentation by reverting the vandalism. That’s never been a problem in Powerpoint.

On the way, we’ve explored the strengths of the wiki platform as well as the weaknesses. A misconception among academics is that Wikipedia throws everything together without the traditional publishers’ concern for quality. It’s quite a shock for people to see how much contextual information there is about the quality and authorship of articles, and how much effort goes into various review processes.

‘Open’ goes beyond ‘public’. Imagine the following:

A museum creates an online image gallery of its exhibits.
Educators write overviews of key historical events that are available in an eBook.
Researchers publish some key facts and figures as a table in a PDF document.

These might all be great resources, but it’s a mistake to call them ‘open access’ (as people sometimes do) just because they can be accessed without subscription. When we talk about ‘free and open’ we mean content that is not tied to one particular way of accessing it. We mean the ability to remix and reuse, not just read.

What does a remix of knowledge and culture look like? In the course we’ve had hands-on experience with a few examples. Histropedia is independent of the Wikimedia charity, but uses data, images and text from Wikipedia and related projects to create interactive timelines. It provides a new and educational way to look at a topic. Other tools display Wikipedia’s knowledge on a map, in abstract conceptual space, or in a weird hybrid of encyclopedia and database. If Wikimedia sites and their contributors did not explicitly allow remixing, these kinds of tool would not exist, and the world of education and research would be poorer for it.

True to the open spirit, I am documenting the workshops, and all participant feedback, on a public wiki. I’m also using Wikipedia talk pages to keep in touch with participants. The worksheets are available to download, as editable files. Anyone is welcome to use them to run a discussion or training session around Wikipedia and related sites.

Note: it’s still possible for University of Oxford staff or students to book for Workshop 3: ‘Putting knowledge in‘ and Workshop 4: ‘Building collaborations‘.

Aaaand we’re back! Oxford University to train Open Knowledge Ambassadors

Posted on December 17, 2015 by Alasdair Watson

In a national first, Oxford University’s Bodleian Libraries and IT Services are collaborating on a four-part course to help academics, students, and related staff work with Wikipedia. Oxford University staff and students will earn an ‘Open Knowledge Ambassador’ certificate for taking part in training workshops, spaced every two weeks through Hilary term, that help them support activities such as edit-a-thons. The programme is a part of Oxford’s annual Engage programme in digital communication for researchers.

Although the course will be centred around Wikipedia, the title reflects that it is not about a web site, but about understanding and explaining the possibilities of freely-reusable open knowledge. This is increasingly topical in academia as more research outputs become open access, more learners use open educational resources and more cultural institutions share their digital media on open platforms such as Wikimedia Commons.

The course, hosted in the Centre for Digital Scholarship in the Bodleian’s Weston Library, will be led by Dr Martin Poulter, the Bodleian Libraries’ Wikimedian In Residence.

The sessions will involve active learning, based on assignments which involve exploring Wikipedia and related sites and report backing back to the group. On the way, each participant build a personal portal of tools and links related to their areas of interest. The focus is on building an understanding of Wikipedia’s strengths and weaknesses and involving colleagues in using it to support research and education.

The course is not about the fine details of Wikipedia’s internal processes or its house style, but more about using open knowledge sites in an informed way and explaining them to others. For hands-on experience of improving Wikipedia articles, participants are recommended to register for one of next term’s public editathon events: those announced so far are a social internet editathon for Wikipedia’s 15th birthday in January and the first ever Tudor music editathon on 5 February.

The first two workshops will look at ways to get and make use of open knowledge from Wikipedia and other sites, and at questions of quality and reliability. We will explore some of the open knowledge tools which are incredibly useful but usually only known to ‘power users’. The latter two workshops will explore ways of putting information in, including how to work with a group of experts to improve articles or share images. Enthusiasm for sharing knowledge, and helping others do so, is the only prerequisite.

Workshop schedule and booking links

Session 1: What would a world of open knowledge be like?
Wednesday 20 January
1-2.30pm
http://courses.it.ox.ac.uk/detail/ENLE1

Session 2: Getting knowledge out
Wednesday 3 February
1-2.30pm
http://courses.it.ox.ac.uk/detail/ENLE2

Session 3: Putting knowledge in.
Wednesday 17 February
1-2.30pm
http://courses.it.ox.ac.uk/detail/ENLE3

Session 4: Building collaborations
Wednesday 2 March
1-2.30pm
http://courses.it.ox.ac.uk/detail/ENLE4

Queries should be emailed to Martin at martin.poulter@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

Thing 14 2013: Exploring Wikipedia

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Alasdair Watson

Did you know?

There are over 4,300,000 articles on English Wikipedia
7% of the planet reads Wikipedia
All content (including discussion and sandboxes) is public
7% of edits are malicious and the median time for removal is <2 minutes
There is a special tag for dinosaur images that are anatomically inaccurate!

Wikipedia is the best example of what the ‘wisdom of crowds’ can achieve, although it is not without its detractors. To get an overview of the pros and cons, read the Wikipedia page about Wikipedia itself, and some of the pages linked to from it. Wikipedia is often criticized as inaccurate or unreliable, but it is in fact one of the biggest sources of factual information online, and studies have shown that in many cases its accuracy compares favourably to other established online encyclopedias (see Nature’s article ‘Internet encyclopedias go head to head’). Even controversial Wikipedia articles can offer an excellent picture of the controversy itself via an article’s discussion page. Like any encyclopedia, Wikipedia articles can be a great starting point for research.

Task
Many of you will already be familiar with Wikipedia itself and how to find information, but it pays to explore some of the article elements a bit further. Start by looking up some things that interest you; see what Wikipedia says. One of the most useful elements of Wikipedia is its strong citation policy. Look at the references linked at the bottom of the page – whatever the merits of the Wikipedia article itself, this can be a good starting point for research elsewhere on the web.

Many people are unaware of the ‘history’ tab (top right) and ‘talk’ tab (top left) for Wikipedia articles. These can make very interesting reading, particularly for controversial articles or subjects where there are strong opposing viewpoints, as you can see how the current version (and consensus) has been reached. Here, readers can suggest changes that they think should be made and argue their points; the discussion can get very in-depth and occasionally heated! Take a look at the discussion for a few articles.

Exploring further
Wikipedia is only as good as its authors, and we encourage you to give editing a Wikipedia page a try. It’s easier than you might think! Although you don’t have to have an account, we’d encourage you to set one up as it allows you to participate in discussions more easily and, though it may seem counterintuitive, allows you more anonymity (you can operate under a pseudonym with an account, but an anonymous edit records your IP address). Take a look at the Public Library of Science’s ‘Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia’ before you get started, and use Wikipedia’s markup cheat sheet as a guide.

Just one caveat: Do keep in mind that you’re not generally encouraged to edit information about your own company or organisation, as it may present a conflict of interest. If you’re worried about this, take a look at how the US National Archives have turned Wikipedia into a positive tool while avoiding these conflicts.

Blog post
What are your thoughts on Wikipedia as a source of information? Do you think it is reliable? Do you think that having the information on the history and talk pages available adds to your understanding of page topics? Tag your post Thing 14.

Further reading

Engage programme leaders Liz McCarthy & Kate Lindsay on Wikipedia in higher educuation in The Guardian
Jisc Wikimedian in Residence Martin Poulter on Wikipedia in higher education
Bodleian Libraries Web Manager Alison Prince on using Wikipedia in cultural institutions
Wikipedia’s own guide to Evaluating Wikipedia Article Quality
And not exactly reading, but check out Wikistream – an incredible live stream of additions and edits to Wikipedia pages all over the world

Wikipedia: Learning by sharing knowledge

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Alasdair Watson

The second in our series of guest posts come from Jisc Wikimedian Ambassador Martin Poulter, who takes a look at why using Wikipedia in education is important.

Librarians collaborated with Wikipedians old and new to improve articles related to Multnomah County, Oregon.

Billions of people around the world crave education, but lack the resources we take for granted. Adequate libraries and current textbooks are out of their reach, but they are increasingly getting internet access. Meanwhile, every day in universities and schools, talented students are writing essays, then handing them in to be read by a tutor who already knows the topic, to be marked and eventually thrown away. If only that student work could be put into a free, multilingual, knowledge-sharing space.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is part of a charitable project to give everyone on the planet free access to the sum of all human knowledge. This takes enormous effort from tens of thousands of volunteer editors, and after thirteen years it is still very much a work in progress. In many areas, Wikipedia has a real need for decent, well-written content.

In writing an online encyclopedia, the Wikipedia community needs people to:

choose and evaluate sources
represent sources with the right amount of relative weight;
structure information clearly to convey what is known about that topic;
write neutrally without bringing in subjective interpretations and opinions;
write in an original way to avoid plagiarism;
write accessibly for the widest audience;
check grammar and wording;
illustrate by finding, creating, or adapting images;
review articles against quality criteria;
and to discuss and justify these choices with people who may have a different perspective.

So there are research, textual, social and even legal skills involved in being a Wikipedian. Users do not need all these skills from the outset, but can start small and develop them by interacting with the community.

These look very like the skills that we try to develop and sharpen in degree-level education. That is why, in education systems around the world, hundreds of academics have set their students to improve, critique, translate, or illustrate Wikipedia articles. Articles such as Dictator novel, Implicit self-esteem and Nuclear energy policy in the United States have become rich and informative through student involvement.

Writing for the world, rather than just for one’s tutor, is potentially very motivating. It also risks ‘stage fright’. The course and assessment need to be structured to ensure learners are comfortable with Wikipedia’s norms and prepared to make the right sort of contributions.

Many lecturers and teachers are still suspicious of Wikipedia and (in vain) tell students to avoid it altogether. They see it purely as a reference resource. Seeing it as an educational process or as a knowledge-sharing community gives a different perspective: A poor Wikipedia article offers an opportunity to create active – and in some cases extremely rewarding – experiences for learners, while improving the world’s access to free educational material.

The US-based Wikimedia Foundation has some case studies from educators and here in the UK there is an index of education projects that may provide inspiration and guidance.

Martin Poulter, based at the University of Bristol, is the Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador (funded by Jisc and Wikimedia UK) from July 2013 to March 2014. He edits on Wikipedia as User:MartinPoulter.

Thing 14: Exploring Wikipedia

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Alasdair Watson