User:Gaianauta/Wikipedia and Science

[ This is ongoing work to document the lack of commitment of the scientific community with Wikipedia and identifying possible solutions. Edits are very welcome. I am aware of the lack of references so far. ]

Introduction
Wikipedia is one of the largest collaborative efforts ever made. 100,000 active editors [outdated figures], ca. 1 billion total edits, several thousand person·year's invested. The growth of Wikipedia has now reached a steady state after the initial exponential growth, and the number of active editors has decreased in over the last 5 years (30% in the english version). It would be interesting to know how much of this is because the work is done, or because the new generations just aren't that impressed about the WP phenomenon. The present article aims at showing that the work is definitely not done. Articles regarded as highly-specialized a few years ago, today look like general articles. As the size and impact of Wikipedia increased, so did the discussion on its reliability and accuracy. Since its fundation in 2001, the success of this encyclopedia (open to editions by everyone under no formal academic control on who is who) has been regarded with skepticism. Criticisms are often raised by non-contributors who often know little about the mechanisms operating in WP, but this does not make them less legitimate. In fact, few of us would have envisaged the present reach of this unprecedented experiment 10 years ago, and nobody can really predict how far it can really go. A by-product of this skepticism is the reluctance of scientists to contribute to Wikipedia. Or to admit that they also use Wikipedia as a helpful first source to start from. Even if that is the original and only purpose of any encyclopedia. And the question arises as to whether reduced scientific participation in Wikipedia is either the cause or the result of the poor quality of the highly-specialized articles that neighbor the boundaries of knowledge.

The question
Wikipedians love knowledge and love sharing it, just as scientists do. And yet, scientists seem reluctant to contribute to Wikipedia. The problem is not trivial, since behind hides the future of Wikipedia and how far will it go from general to specialized knowledge. The question at stake is whether very specific scientific articles such as "dynamic topography" will always remain poor relative to "iceberg", or not.

In spite of this reluctance, recent experiences are showing that Wikipedia can bring more to scientists than these have often assumed.

Wikipedians and Scientists. Or what keeps scientists reluctant to contribute to WP
Scientists spend their professional life looking for knowledge gaps and eventually publishing the new bits they grasp by delivering all copyrights to an editorial office. If the paper turns out to be a success, i.e., highly cited, it is the editorial that will be economically rewarded, not them. From this perspective, they have much in common with wikipedians.

And it can not be forgotten that scientists are by no means alien to Wikipedia, and polls have repeatedly exposed a significant presence of researchers among frequent editors. Although their contributions presumably are often linked to their research, it is rare that WP logins are explicitly linked to the real name of the scientist behind, showing that for a scientist, editing in WP is something of a should-not-be.

What then keeps scientists reluctant to edit WP?

Altruism no more
One thing that makes scientists different from wikipedians is that they generally love and they manage to be paid for their job. It might have been an altruist profession in the past, involving weirdos barely sponsored by wealthy enthusiasts, but this is long over. Undoubtedly, there is an inherent altruist component in research, since you are offering society to increase the available public knowledge, normally with little or unpredictable short-term revenues that will rarely bring you immediate reward. Ask around, many of us have done research for months without a loan during the PhD studies. But as we grow older the perspective changes, and many of my colleagues spend now significant time thinking of how to increase their retribution.

Recognition
Another specificity about scientists is that they also love to get recognition for their work. Ask a scientist about salary and you will get an automatic reference to how beautiful is life for "my university friends who joined the industry". Since salary is often not the main drive, the share of 'fame' is always carefully measured. Scientists may find somewhat offending if an scientific Wikipedia entry cites not an original publication but a comment published about it in a newspaper.

Reversions and the need to be familiar with the WP rules
-''What? you want me to spend time writing up an article that any 15 years old will be able to revert me?'' - A scientist needs a lot of explanation about the rules of WP edition before they understand why it worths.

Hunger for knowledge gaps, not for well-established knowledge
But the true fundamental difference between these two characters is another one: Wikipedians are encyclopedians, and thus they are interested in accounting the well-established knowledge that is a consensus among experts. This is exactly where a scientist does not want to loose to much time in (and usually she or he will use Wikipedia to close that first phase of their research faster). The banners accusing a Wikipedian of performing original research (see WP:OR) are penalizing exactly what a scientist expects to be recognised for. And this must be understood by the scientist before starting to edit in WP.

Fear for peers
Scientists mind a lot what their peers think of them, since they are in the end the evaluators of their research. Quests show that one of the main reasons stopping researchers from being open about their involvement in WP is the skepticism or disdain they presume in their colleagues. And yet, the same quests indicate that actually the overall scientist presence in WP is higher than scientists think (Eduard Aibar, UOC, #Wiki4HE, 2013). This is a 'tabu' situation, the typical one where everybody does but nobody dares to admit it.

Problem summary
So let's face it: Scientists are not necessarily altruist, they like their monthly loan, and they expect additional recognition. Truely they feel empathy for the open knowledge movement and they use Wikipedia to track the established knowledge easily, but after they move quickly to do their true job: finding gaps they can shed some light on.

The question arises as to whether Wikipedia can give something else than altruism back to scientists to motivate them to incorporate to Wikipedia their priviledged, highly-specialised access to the fore-frontiers of knowledge.

Fixing and structuring your knowledge
In essence, the return of editing in Wikipedia is very similar to the one you get from teaching. You think you know about a subject until you have to teach it. Or, for the matter, until you have to write it down. Everyone who has a first try at writing a short scientific paper has probably realized something cool in that process. No matter how much you wait to start writing after you get your results: you will only learn their true relevance by the end of the writing. In other words: writing (as teaching) is part of the learning process. The same happens with editing in Wikipedia. You only realize how little you know of a subject when you start editing on it. The good side of it is that 1) knowing what you ignore is a great 1st step; 2) you have the source for enhancing your knowledge already open in front of you; and 3) in Wikipedia you don't have to finish the article, you do what you can and then leave it unfinished for others to complete it. [develope]

Filling MY Ocean
Many feel an irresistible impulse to make their research field present in the Wikipedia, specially when they realise that the subject that they devote their time to does not even have a small corner in the web.

Modesty and perspective for your own ideas
For reasons that don't apply here, scientists are naturally selected over the long years of their unsave careers to be egocentric, narcissistic. I dare to write this because in compensation we scientists have also a good sense of humor and relative good level of self-criticism when attacked as a group (not individually). Well, Wikipedia can help you. As user PePeEfe used to say, many scientists came to Wikipedia and then quit because their wisdom was not respected enough. The reviews in Wikipedia are different from those you receive for a paper you submit to a scientific journal. Nobody will discuss whether you are wright or wrong, but whether you can support your edition with a reliable source or not. Or whether you made the edition agreeing stylistically with WP's rules. The latter will force you to learn some key things the first time you edit (guide here). But the first will surely teach you a lot about what you really know and what is really well established in your discipline.

[develope]

Wikidata, semantic search]

Teaching
Navigating in the Wikipedia will let you learn some skills such as categorizing, etc., that will allow you find new efficient ways to find the information you need.

[develope]

Bringing attention (and discussion) to your discipline
Self-promotion is banned in Wikipedia, and although it is difficult to track, I am not aware of any truly attempt at self-promoting one's scientific theories by edit-lobbing ...

However, simply participating and categorizing in your discipline will bring you benefits because it will easy the access for both the broad and the specialized audiences.

[develope]

Discussion
When future history books try to characterize the beginning of the 21st century, they will probably cite the appearance of the first open encyclopedia, the first non-professional compilation of knowledge. I agree that a blind believe in the fully-open editing that characterizes Wikipedia is an oxymoron that may risk leading to a new type of sect if not under scrutiny. But let's explore what the limits of that revolutionary approach before dismissing it. Let scientists participate in the same way non-specialized editors did during the early stages of the project, and see what the limits of Wikipedia contents really are. Contribution to WIkipedia by scientist should be encouraged. Scientist should feel encouraged to bring their knowledge to WP. Free knowledge and Science have much to gain from each other.

Future actions
The question arises as to what can be done now to rectify the threats and to benefit from the strengths exposed above.

WikiLovesScience ?
One way to promote the writing of scientific articles could be adopting the experience from WikiLovesMonuments, that proofed successful to burst the upload of multimedia files to Wikimedia Commons. This WikiLovesScience could consist of a contest of new article writing, and make use of the recent implementation of WP-articles evaluation, so that the jury can actually be the entire internet community. Or the inclusion of scientific references in existing WP articles. Thus, the participant would, for example, postulate an article created or improved during the contest period as a candidate for excellence. A similar procedure could be followed for a contest on article improvements.