User:ShaneGero/draft course page/Course description

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Description
Wikipedia is viewed over 5 billion times a day and is the 7th most visited site on the internet globally, behind Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo!, Baidu (Chinese search engine), and Amazon. In most searches, Wikipedia is the #1 result returned for most marine mammal common and latin binomial names, and for the term marine mammal. As a result the public accesses content on Wikipedia about diverse topics from Whaling to the effects of climate change on marine mammals on a daily basis. For example, the article on blue whales has already been viewed over 28,000 times since January 1st, 2015!

A common complaint of many scientists is that Wikipedia is not a well-grounded reference for information. Nonetheless, the people; including students, the media, and government officials; accesses information about marine mammal behavior, species facts, conservation issues, and taxonomy online every day. This issue is that contemporary knowledge about marine mammal species and conservation issues in the primary research literature is disparate, difficult to read and access, and not always free or open access.

As the premier international society for understanding marine mammals and their interactions with their environment and humans, the Society for Marine Mammalogy is committed to providing the most up-to-date information about these species to the public.

Between January 19 and 25th, experts from around the world will begin a week-long “sprint” to edit, update, correct, and reference Wikipedia’s pages relating to marine mammals. The goal is to increase public access to accurate information about marine mammal species, their habitat, and the conservation issues; while linking this first access point to the deeper literature.

We are building a community of passionate experts who believe that everyone should have access to up-to-date information about the species with which we work and the Society is looking for your help in making this a success.

The Society for Marine Mammalogy is hosting this WikiSprint and we invite you to edit and advance the content of Wikipedia's pages relating to marine mammals, their habitat, and their conservation. It will be 7 days of editing and contributing to increasing public access to information about marine mammal species.