Submissions:2015/Thinking (and contributing) outside the editing box: Alternative ways to engage subject-matter experts/Notes

Session notes

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Motivations to contribute

• Having it "count" for something

• Peer recognition
• Professional "credit"

• Service
• Research/Scholarship?

• Contributing to public knowledge
• Communicating knowledge from your field
• Public service
• Learning / practice
• Collaboration / networking

Challenges

• Typical Wikipedia learning curve
• Stark contrast between Wikipedia model/policies and academic community/norms

• we don't defer to experts just because of their credentials/expertise
• Role of primary vs. secondary sources
• Role of original research
• Ignore all rules
• Verifiability, not truth
• Implications of not knowing the rules while using your real name

• Conflict of interest
• Lack of time

Making contributions to Wikipedia "count"

There's at least one example of someone who got credit for Wikipedia contributions (User:Drmies). Public service credit, but also scholarship credit by explaining the similarities between FA processes on Wikipedia and the processes of traditional academic publishing.

• Maybe we can get him to write a how-to or make a video making this comparison

Question of how to quantify, define, or otherwise present your contributions.

• Is there a way to help experts do this?
• Maybe Wiki Ed include information about this as part of bridging academia and Wikipedia?
• Check out Jason Priem's work on alt-metrics -- not competing with typical assessments, but include things like social media [and Wikipedia]

Recording reviews, etc. on video might count as a presentation (similar to a conference presentation or invited talk).

Some skepticism that we can reliably tell people it can count as scholarship, but it can definitely count as public service.

Many grants require demonstration of broader/public impact -- this could be part of that.

• NIH supports increasing public access

Value of being a "public intellectual".

Reviewing

Experts contributing reviews of articles.

• Example: Karen Lemmey reviews the Wikipedia entry for The Greek Slave (see Talk:The Greek Slave)
• Example: Andrew's Skype call with David Frank mediating criticism of the Chaim Perelman article
• Example: http://hypothes.is annotation tool for experts to leave comments on webpages (like Wikipedia articles)
• Example: British Medical Journal offered to get people to review articles

Might be able to get instructors to have students talk to subject-matter experts about a topic, using a Wikipedia article. They could make a video of that conversation and post it to the article talk page.

Expert stamps of approval / documenting "reviewed" status

• Marking certain versions as "expert reviewed"

• Could do on the talk page, but visibility is important
• Infobox?
• Display like a maintenance template?

• Very similar to Wikipedia Version 1.0

• Displaying an expert or documentation of an expert's review brings with it problems of who chooses the expert, what defines an expert, what happens when other experts disagree, etc.

Content gap analyses

Examining the coverage of topics on Wikipedia, identifying opportunities.

Applies to individual articles, clusters of articles about a subject, whole fields/categories...

Ask an Expert

Making an expert available to the community, perhaps connected to a WikiProject, for questions about sources, reviews of article, advice, etc.

Wiki Ed is thinking about starting a database of subject-matter experts interested to contribute to Wikipedia.

• Possibility for matchmaking

Working in/around conferences

Academics are busy. Conferences are when there's some flexibility to try new ways of interacting with peers and the field. It's also when many experts are gathered together and could maximize time investments of Wikipedia volunteers (e.g. chapter members).

• Example: Wikimedia Switzerland got involved in the Solanaceae Conference, contributing to related articles on Wikipedia during the conference. Made a strong positive impression on the community.

Mediation

Ways to mediate expert contributions.

• Example: University of Michigan's ExpertIdeasBot, mediating expert reviews of articles, posting them to the talk page
• Example: the Karen Lemmey review of The Greek Slave was recorded on video and posted to the talk page
• Example: The Solanaceae Conference - similar to mediating contributions for experts

Who are the experts

• Also look at grad students