Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-09-29/News and notes



Medical-school class profiled as case study of Wikipedia Education Program
A team of students, academics, researchers, and Wikipedia contributors have produced "Why Medical Schools Should Embrace Wikipedia", a case study of the Wikipedia Education Program, published in the journal Academic Medicine. (I was one of the co-authors.) The research presents the study method and outcomes for several groups of medical students editing Wikipedia health-related articles. This paper is the first academic case-study of the Program. It models a method for reporting audience reach for Wikipedia editing projects, grants credibility for Wikipedia editing in the sensitive space of medical schools, and presents a thorough classroom outreach and follow-up model which interested instructors may replicate.



In the study, a class on editing Wikipedia was offered between 2013 and 2015 to final-year medical students. Collectively, 43 students edited 43 Wikipedia articles. Student contributions were reviewed by classroom peers, topic experts, and the Wikipedia community. Following the class, the Wikipedia articles edited by the students were accessed more than 22 million times by Wikipedia readers. The authors of the paper argue that students met learning goals by editing Wikipedia, and that Wikipedia is an efficient way for anyone to share information with a large, relevant audience.

The research is significant because Wikipedia continues to gain popularity as a source of medical information among health-science professionals and students. Having a Wikipedia editing case-study in a medical school is especially pertinent because readers use the information to inform healthcare decisions.

Historically, many Wikipedia outreach projects have focused on reporting Wikipedia participation. This study highlighted the impact to readers by tracking Wikipedia pageviews of the articles edited by the students. Although a comparison to other publishing channels was outside the scope of the study, the paper does provocatively ask if a student-written article "garners over 100,000 views/ month, might those edits constitute the greatest contribution to the medical literature in that student’s nascent career?”

Following this paper’s publication, the authors make the following calls to action:

First, they would like Wikipedians to support instructors in considering class projects that include student Wikipedia editing. When an instructor and students can accept the time involved in the Wikipedia Education Program, the students gain practical experience in new media publishing; Wikipedia editors access high-quality information to process; professors have the opportunity to guide text in their field of expertise that will be widely read around the world; the school gains prestige for making a real-world impact, and Wikipedia readers have access to improved information in Wikipedia articles.

Second, the authors would like ask whether any method exists which is more efficient to share general interest information than Wikipedia. Right now, Wikipedia’s significance is broadly doubted in education, publishing, and the media. Despite the doubts, perhaps no other organization reaches a larger or more relevant audience than Wikipedia in medicine, or any other field for that matter. Are there other reputable authorities who will make their readership metrics public for comparison? LR

Ray Saintonge (Eclecticology) dies
Thus Ray Saintonge's wife announced the death of the longtime Wikimedian. Raymond Michael Saintonge, better known to many Wikimedians as User:Eclecticology, died at the age of 73 on September 12, 2016, with his family at his side.

True to his username, Ray impacted numerous facets of the Wikimedia world in a wiki career of 14 years. His local newspaper in Richmond, British Columbia published a death notice, and many Wikimedians learned of his passing through a message posted to Facebook (not publicly visible), and republished to the Wikimedia-L email list, comprising a short message from his family in English and French.

Ray first edited Wikipedia in February 2002, with a series of additions to the Library of Congress catalog scheme page. Making more than 1,000 edits in his first month, to topics as varied as chess, Shakespeare, indigenous peoples, as well as service pages like disambiguation and talk pages, he had clearly found a platform that facilitated exploration of his varied interests. His English Wikipedia user page still carries a barnstar, awarded in 2011, for his contributions to The Cambridge Modern History. Ray was among those credited by Andrew Lih, in the acknowledgments for his 2009 book Wikipedia Revolution, as among "those who gave special insight on the community".

But Ray didn't stop with Wikipedia; according to his several user pages, he was involved with the launch of Wikisource, and was Wiktionary's first bureaucrat. Over the years, he accumulated 36,000 edits to 62 Wikimedia sites. His early and ongoing engagement was cited in a 2008 email discussion building the case for registration of the Wikimedia trademarks in Canada. One illustration of the breadth of Ray's interests was his work on the "Authors lists" for the site Canada's Early Women Writers, a project based at the University of Alberta, where his detailed work is in evidence in the discussions at the bottom of the initial page.

Ray attended each of the first ten annual Wikimania conferences, beginning in Frankfurt in 2005. He shared this distinction with just seven others. Colleagues praised his unwavering attendance, his pleasant manner, and his insights in their comments on Wikimedia-L.

Ray's contributions to Meta Wiki reflect his ongoing interest in the policies and organizational structures of the Wikimedia movement. For many years he was a valued participant in mailing lists such as Wikimedia-L (previously known as Foundation-L). He ran for a seat on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees in 2008; his candidate statement offers a glimpse into his background, his personality, and his philosophical views relating to Wikimedia. He mentioned his career as a tax consultant, and his volunteer work in his son's school district; and described himself as a "manic" book collector and a "clutterholic". He emphasized his interest in governance issues, and in the importance of grassroots leadership and the autonomy of Wikimedia projects. He expressed concern about technical obstacles to editing, and advocated for chapters taking a leading role in decentralizing Wikimedia's organizational structure. In 2014, he added his name to a letter to Wikimedia Foundation leadership (which I wrote), reflecting his ongoing interest in less centralized control.

Ray's interest in governance and politics never pushed aside his core appreciation for sharing knowledge, or his drive to connect with colleagues. A moment recalled by, a colleague at Wikimedia Canada who was visiting Ray's home, reveals that passion: Ray, with eyes sparkling, handed Benoit the oldest book he has ever held in his life. —himself no stranger to the challenges of an unusual username—recalled Ray sharing his own amusement that nobody could pronounce his username.

Ray served on the Chapters Committee from 2010 to 2013, during which time it changed its name to the Affiliations Committee (AffCom), and adjusted its scope. It was during Ray's tenure on AffCom that I made his acquaintance at several conferences; we shared a hotel room, and several enjoyable conversations, during the 2011 Wikimania conference. Ray and his colleagues on AffCom grappled with governance issues that continue to the present day, as covered in the previous edition of the Signpost.

In 2011, Ray joined the Board of Directors of Wikimedia Canada, where he served for several years. In 2012, the founder of the site Wikilivres (an independently run site that complements Wikisource, hosting books which are in the Public Domain in Canada but not yet in the United States) needed to step aside; Ray, who had participated there since 2009, took the reins. The Wikilivres community is currently discussing its plans going forward, and appears likely to transition smoothly to a new operator.

has written In memory of Ray on the German Wikipedia's Kurier.

Those who knew or knew of Ray are encouraged to share memories in the comments below, or on one of his various user pages. Ray's family would appreciate donations in his name to the BC Cancer Foundation or the Salvation Army Rotary Hospice House. PF



Brief notes

 * Major download savings for mobile devices: Mobile devices account for about half of all traffic to Wikimedia sites, and downloading all images in an article has always been problematic where bandwidth and quotas are limited. The Wikimedia Foundation has launched a new system by which images are downloaded only when the reader scrolls down to them. One test in Indonesia showed a download saving of 32%. More details at Jon Robson's blog for the WMF.
 * Wikimedia Foundation Endowment's Advisory Board adds third member: Peter Baldwin, history professor and philanthropist, joins Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and venture capitalist Annette Campbell-White on the board, which was established in late 2015.
 * Lack of VisualEditor on talk pages: an impediment for new editors?:, the Wikipedian in Residence for UNESCO, opened a discussion at the Village Pump, proposing that the VisualEditor software be enabled on article talk pages. The proposal has drawn a variety of views, including apparent opposition from the Wikimedia Foundation, which may favor waiting until mid-2017, when it plans to introduce discussion-oriented features.
 * French Wiktionary offers English edition of its monthly newsletter: The French Wiktionary has been publishing a monthly newsletter, Actualités, since early 2015, oriented at readers interested in words and lexicography. They have translated their August 2016 edition into English.
 * Wikipedia citation of academic papers considered in standard recommendations: The US National Information Standards Organization (NISO) released a report, Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Metrics Project, which makes recommendations for altmetrics (a method of analysis to assess the influence of scholarly publications that looks beyond citations in peer-reviewed sources). Wikipedia is considered an important data source, and the report explores the significance of addition and removal of scholarly sources in Wikipedia articles. Meanwhile, Casey Phillips, a news and entertainment reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, also mused on the value of being cited by Wikipedia in his column: In Tune: Is being a source on Wikipedia 'making it'? Probably not. (Sept. 22)
 * Wikipedia Library reports on "research help" pilot: The Wikipedia Library team at the Wikimedia Foundation has reported on a pilot project it conducted, beginning in December 2015, which added a "research help" link to 10,000 Wikipedia articles. The pilot was intended to help readers evaluate the role of Wikipedia in research.
 * New article protection level ("extended confirmed") implemented: A new protection level has been announced that may be used only in cases where "semi-protection has proven ineffective", prevents editing by users with fewer than 30 days' tenure or fewer than 500 edits.