User:Alarichall

I'm an academic working on north-west European, and on a good day Islamicate, medieval history, literature and language, and on modern Icelandic culture. See further http://www.alarichall.org.uk and Alaric Hall.

For some of my opinions about Wikipedia, see '[https://alarichall.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/are-you-an-academic-who-vandalises-wikipedia-then-stop-it Are you an academic who vandalises Wikipedia? Then stop it!]' and 'How to Change (Medieval) History'.

I was quite chuffed to find that Joe Lewis, 'University strike action in the UK' ([London]: House of Commons Library, 23 May 2023), is largely a précis of 2018–2023 UK higher education strikes, which I've maintained over the last few years (even with the same picture on the cover!). This is a bit cheeky, because the Creative Commons license for Wikipedia specifies that people adapting the material should give due attribution to Wikipedia, and it doesn't. But otherwise it's nice to see my work saving a civil servant some effort and helping inform Parliament :-) When those strikes are finally over I hope to tame the article and make it less of a sprawling chronicle.

I look after the account https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NSBReynolds.

I love http://rcmap.hatnote.com and http://listen.hatnote.com/.

A short Wikipedia bibliography
This book looks great, though at the time of writing I haven't read it yet: Wikipedia @ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Revolution, ed. by Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2020), ISBN 9780262538176. Also, I must find out more about https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Expert_outreach.

Otherwise, these are some of my previous favourite studies on Wikipedia, focusing on its epistemological validity in relation to history (mostly as of summer 2017) and a few more recent pieces on editors' gender:


 * Thompson, Neil C. and Douglas Hanley 'Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence From a Randomized Control Trial', MIT Sloan Research Paper, 5238-17 (2019), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3039505
 * Adler, Melissa, 'Wikipedia and the Myth of Universality', Nordisk Tidsskrift for Informationsvidenskab og Kulturformidling, 5.1 (2016), 9-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20160326081141/http://ntik.dk/2016/Nr1/Adler.pdf
 * Ármann Jakobsson, 'Beware of the Elf! A Note on the Evolving Meaning of Álfar', Folklore, 126 (2015), 215-23, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.2015.1023511 (Not on Wikipedia as such, but it starts by criticising a Wikipedia article I'd rewritten, and I later edited the article in the light of the publication—a nice story of scholarship doing its job.)
 * Bear, Julia B. and Benjamin Collier, 'Where are the Women in Wikipedia? Understanding the Different Psychological Experiences of Men and Women in Wikipedia', Sex Roles, 74(5-6) (2016), 254–65. doi:10.1007/s11199-015-0573-y
 * Bruckman, Amy S., Should You Believe Wikipedia? Online Communities and the Construction of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022),
 * Fallis, Don, 'Toward an Epistemology of Wikipedia', Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59 (2008), 1662-74 http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105728
 * Ford, Heather, 'Fact Factories: Wikipedia and the Power to Represent' (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2015). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282643334; DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.4068.9361
 * Ford, Heather, ‘Wikipedia and the Sum of All Human Information’, Nordisk Tidsskrift for Informationsvidenskab og Kulturformidling, 5.1 (2016), 9-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20160309200333/http://www.ntik.dk/2016/Nr1/Ford.pdf
 * Ford, Heather and Judy Wajcman, '"Anyone Can Edit", Not Everyone Does: Wikipedia’s Infrastructure and the Gender Gap', Social Studies of Science, 47.4 (2017), 511-27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312717692172
 * Goodwin, Jean, 'The Authority of Wikipedia', in Argument Cultures: Proceedings of OSSA 09, ed. by J. Ritola (2009), pp. 1-21. http://scholar.uwindsor.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1144&context=ossaarchive.
 * Impey, Chris David, Martin Formanek, Sanlyn Rebecca Buxner, Matthew C. Wenger, 'Twenty Seven Years of Tracking Undergraduate Science Knowledge and Beliefs', Electronic Journal of Science Education, 21.4 (2017), 41-64. http://ejse.southwestern.edu/article/view/17315/11409
 * Jemielniak, Dariusz and Eduard Aibar, 'Bridging the Gap Between Wikipedia and Academia', Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67 (2016), 1773–76. http://www.uoc.edu/webs/eaibar/_resources/documents
 * Mai, Jens-Erik, 'Wikipedians' Knowledge and Moral Duties', Nordisk Tidsskrift for Informationsvidenskab og Kulturformidling, 5.1 (2016), 15-22. http://www.ntik.dk/2016/Nr1/Mai.pdf
 * Mesgari, Mostafa, Chitu Okoli, Mohamad Mehdi, Finn Årup Nielsen, and Arto Lanamäki, ' “The Sum of All Human Knowledge”: A Systematic Review of Scholarly Research on the Content of Wikipedia', Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66 (2015), 219–45; https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/978652/ (the various other Wikipedia literature reviews by these authors are also amazing!)
 * Sanger, Lawrence M., 'The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia', Episteme, 6 (2009), 52-73; https://doi.org/10.3366/E1742360008000543
 * Shaw, Aaron and Eszter Hargittai, 'The Pipeline of Online Participation Inequalities: The Case of Wikipedia Editing', Journal of Communication, 68.1 (2018), 143–68. doi:10.1093/joc/jqx003
 * Wagner, Claudia, Eduardo Graells-Garrido, David Garcia, Filippo Menczer, 'Women Through the Glass Ceiling: Gender Asymmetries in Wikipedia', European Physical Journal: Data Science, 5.5 (December 2016), 1-24, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjds/s13688-016-0066-4 (doesn't just talk about the gendering of contributors, but also how the encyclopaedia represents women)
 * West, Charles, 'Wikipedia in the History Classroom' (29 May 2018)
 * Wray, K. Brad, 'The Epistemic Cultures of Science and Wikipedia: A Comparison', Episteme, 6 (2009), 38-51; https://doi.org/10.3366/E1742360008000531 (Wray is a useful go-to if you want to cite someone who has misunderstood Wikipedia!
 * West, Charles, 'Wikipedia in the History Classroom' (29 May 2018)
 * Wray, K. Brad, 'The Epistemic Cultures of Science and Wikipedia: A Comparison', Episteme, 6 (2009), 38-51; https://doi.org/10.3366/E1742360008000531 (Wray is a useful go-to if you want to cite someone who has misunderstood Wikipedia!

Barnstars etc.
 The Wikipedia Asian Month 2022 Barnstar Dear :
 * Thanks for participating Wikipedia Asian Month 2022. We are grateful of your dedication to Wikimedia movement and hope you join us next year!
 * Wish you all the best!

Wikipedia Asian Month Team

 Wikipedia Asian Month 2023 Barnstar

Dear :
 * Congratulations! Thank you so much for participating in the Wikipedia Asian Month 2023. We are very grateful for your dedication to the Wikimedia movement and effort in promoting Asian content. Hope to see you again this year and celebrate the 10th year of Wikipedia Asian Month together.


 * Sincerely,

Wikipedia Asian Month International Team