Comments on: A Journal Feeds Wikipedia

By: Science & Engineering News » Scientists publishing in Wikipedia

Science & Engineering News » Scientists publishing in Wikipedia — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:03:14 +0000

[...] also write a page in Wikipedia that summarizes their work. Read more about it in Nature or on the Scholarly Kitchen [...]

By: Rfam, RNA Biology and Wikipedia in the news « Xfam Blog

Rfam, RNA Biology and Wikipedia in the news « Xfam Blog — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:56:39 +0000

[...] http://www.readwriteweb.com arstechnica.com http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk thefischbowl scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org ideas.blogs.nytimes.com http://www.genomeweb.com selab.janelia.org poynder.blogspot.com http://www.earlham.edu [...]

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Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:17:57 +0000

[...] A Journal Feeds Wikipedia « The Scholarly Kitchen [...]

By: Gregory Kohs

Gregory Kohs — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:42:44 +0000

Bingo, for David Crotty. I couldn’t have said it better.

Here’s one of my favorite Wikipedia edits, where a mindless Administrator makes an article WORSE, because he must — MUST — revert the edits of a User who has been deemed subversive to the wiki-cult.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arch_Coal&diff=255482597&oldid=255480884

That’s right, “Big coal givers to West Virginia politicians includes Arch Coal PAC,” is a better sentence than “The Arch Coal PAC (political action committee) is a substantial donor to West Virginia politicians,” in the addled mind of Admin Fram.

The author of the second sentence was blocked from further editing Wikipedia by the administrator who restored the first sentence of gibberish. That was over a month ago. Still, the gibberish rules, and the better version remains suppressed.

Why scientists are eager to immerse themselves in an environment like that is beyond me.

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:48:08 +0000

Given the rampant deletion of articles deemed not significant enough for coverage, it will be interesting to see if many of these entries survive (or if they’ll require the special protection of the Wikipedia overlords as part of their agreement with the journal). Then of course, each article will have to run the gamut of crazed rule-enforcers who spend their lives enforcing the minutiae of Wikipedia regulations.

The obvious culture clash is that the world of science revolves around evidence and being accurate, while the world of Wikipedia revolves around strict adherence to the rules (this is vastly more important than quality of content). Should be entertaining to watch.

By: Bob Badgett

Bob Badgett — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:38:07 +0000

This is a provocative idea with many implications. I add two thoughts to Kent’s and Namit’s discussions.
1. Journals should think more broadly than Wikipedia. While Wikipedia is the largest wiki, its permitting of anonymous editing should rattle an academic publisher. Other wikis do not do this. Why limit to Wikipedia or even to one wiki? Personally I favor Citizendium (founded by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger) although I admit I am on its executive committee.
2. As Namit noted, how should the influx of content from scholarly journals be integrated into the wiki? Without thought on this, a) the wiki might become a watered-down mirror of academic journals and b) shoveling tons of academic articles into a wiki will disrupt the wikis by creating disorganized and redundant content. As a small example, currently there are no links in Wikipedia to the first RNA Biology page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmY.

Not all academic articles should become unique wiki articles. Some academic articles should not be in a wiki at all, whereas some academic articles should become a paragraph or section of an existing wiki article. The journals should minimize the burden on its own authors from creating good wiki edits.

I think these challenges are solvable. While the community of authors at the wikis may solve these problems by themselves, journals interested in this should collaborate with the wikis and be more proactive.

Among the many implications, perhaps someday a journal’s impact will in part be measured by its citations in wikis. An initial study of which journals are being cited at Wikipedia is at http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.2106v1.

By: Namit

Namit — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:50:05 +0000

There is little doubt about the value it adds to wikipedia, but this move might make publishing more cumbersome. In cases where publications span across many topics in the same field, e.g. application of mathematical logic in distributed computing, authors may not find it easy to update all the relevant pages.

Incremental results may not qualify at all. Who draws the line?

Why not just use arxiv after peer reviews?

By: Philip Davis

Philip Davis — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:07:53 +0000

If researchers are using tools like Google to do more of their information seeking, then creating a summary page on the most visible reference site makes great sense. It will draw readers to the original article and increase the visibility and profile of RNA Biology articles. Best of all, the journal makes the author do the work! One could imagine the competing journals to RNA Biology following suit.