Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Evaluation of working with PhD students & researchers in Sweden

Swedish University of Agricultural Science and Wikipedia: the first six months

In January, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) launched it's inaugural Wikipedia program. This program, funded by the Swedish Research Council Formas, and in partnership with Wikimedia Sweden, was led by SLU Wikipedian in Residence, Arild Vågen. The program aims to have at least 100 scholars from SLU leave a substantial contribution and improvement of content to Wikipedia. Launching with a Wikipedia Day event, which brought international speakers, SLU faculty and students, participants were able to get started in the program and learn the basics of contributing to Wikipedia. Organizers developed resources to assist participants with editing, hosted workshops throughout Sweden and worked with SLU to bring Wikipedia into the classroom in the spirit of the Wikipedia Education Program, all with the intention of inspiring and engaging academics, faculty, and post-graduate and PhD level students to contribute their knowledge to Wikipedia.

What happened in the first six months?

Wikipedia Day at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

The project was inaugurated January 18th with a Wikipedia Day at the central Ultuna campus of SLU. The day was filled with speakers about Wikipedia and related subjects, with participants from throughout SLU's Swedish campuses. After Wikipedia Day, the organizers launched the program portal on Meta-wiki. The portal features information on how SLU faculty and students can contribute to Wikipedia. To get participants started easily, templates were created for participants to make user pages showing they are involved in the SLU program.

In the spring, workshops were held in Uppsala, Umeå and Alnarp, for SLU students and scholars. Due to demand, an additional workshop was held in Uppsala. Organizers also planned a workshop in Skara. Due to lack of interest, it was canceled. Usernames of the participants were documented, and all participants were contacted post-workshop for follow-ups on their involvement in the program. Organizers promoted the event through newsletters with PhD-student audiences, including those newsletters specifically for students with approved dissertations, with the hopes that students would share the knowledge they have researched on Wikipedia. Classes at the SLU Uppsala campus also brought Wikipedia into the classrooms, having students write content about their class subjects. The organizer, Wikipedian in Academy, Arild Vågen with closely with Olle Terenius, of SLU, Tina Zeatheaus, Head of Communications at SLU, and Sophie Österberg from Wikimedia Sweden in planning and executing the program.

First six months: results and analysis

Throughout the program organizers have been gathering data about the participants. Organizers gathered data using freely licensed, open source tools like David's multi-account editcounter. Organizers also pulled data on random participants to learn more about what language projects they contributed to during the first six months of the program.

Participants

Out of XX participants, 38 registered usernames on Wikipedia. 74% of those participants edited Swedish Wikipedia, with the remaining editing English Wikipedia. ---in progress---

Statistics of participants;

• 38 persons have registered usernames.
• 15 users have created user pages in the English language-version of Wikipedia.
• 28 users have created user page in the Swedish language-version of Wikipedia
• 13 users have created user pages in Wikipedia Commons.

As we see, several users have created user pages in different projects. Statistics from the editing counter can be obtained here. The editing counter does not measure pictures uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, to which above all one user has contributed hundreds of pictures of insects that he has received assistance to upload. A survey of 10 randomly chosen participants provides the following results;

• Solely created a user page: 4/10
• Edited in the Swedish language-version of Wikipedia: 5/10
• Edited in the English language-version of Wikipedia: 1/10
• Edited in another language-version of Wikipedia: 0/10
• Uploaded pictures to Wikimedia Commons: 2/10

Edited has been defined as have done at least one edit of one article. I have used a feature that registers all contributions a user account does for all projects and for all language versions.

This data reports that XX people edited out of XX. While a formal survey has not been sent to elicit feedback from participants, casual feedback has expressed that lack of free time is a major factor that disallows them from contributing to the program and Wikipedia. The organizers targeted postgraduate and PhD level science students and faculty, meaning free time to contribute to Wikipedia was lacking when unable to include it in an already busy workflow filled with grant applications, assignments and academic development focused research.

Reflection and next steps

Putting a stress on the importance and responsibility that academics have to share one's knowledge could be a critical key in getting Wikipedia editing added to the academic workflow. The three classical issues scholars and postgraduates face when they are trying to dedicate time to scientific outreach (lack of time, lack of incentives, and lack of gained qualifications), are worsened by the fact that a commitment to Wikipedia comes with a certain set of challenges: Wikipedia is not recognized as a channel of communication in the academic world, and scholars are not used to having their texts edited (and sometimes edited by laymen) after the publication. The common denominator for all our activities during the spring has – with a few exceptions (above all the PhD-course) – been that they were separate activities, meaning there has been a certain threshold for the participants to take part (they had to engage them self and take action to get there, and afterwards to find and dedicate time to edit).

Conclusions and future choices of path

As we have noted, a majority of the participants seem to lack a strong enough incentive (carrot) to dedicate their time to edit Wikipedia. We have also noted that our activities during the spring mainly have been separate from other university activities, and that they from the viewpoint of the participants might have been regarded as just another burden, another task to fulfil. It is noteworthy that Sweden has a very low ratio of active Wikipedia users. In March 2013, there were only 123 users who did more than 100 edits, and just 893 users who did more than 5 edits during that month. Accordingly, it is a very limited group who regularly contributes to and edit Wikipedia, and we should be realistic in our expectations of finding such rare dedicated users at the Swedish University of Agricultural Science. Therefore, the results are neither depressing nor unexpected. At the same time, though, the results indicate that it is possible to obtain better results through providing better incentives (motivation) and integrate Wikipedia in existing activities in order to avoid making editing Wikipedia just another assigned task to tick off. Below are some suggestions for future strategies to overcome the main obstacles (lack of time and lack of integration).

1. Increased level of integration in existing activities at the Swedish University of Agricultural Science. For example implemented through making it a clearer part of the curriculum for the PhD-students and place it in a context: to be seen in Wikimedia should be a part of the PhD-students’ presence online and in social media.
2. The good example. For example implemented through the university more clearly stressing the importance of scientific outreach and the distribution of knowledge through common licenses, and that the university actively starts adopting and implementing free licenses that facilitate usage and distribution in Wikimedia (among other channels).
3. Carrot. Positive incentives for institutions, faculties and individuals to participate. For example implemented through promoting scholars and institutions that take part, allocating time for the staff to participate, and the encouragement of positive competition between participants.
4. Stick. More explicit demands for institutions, scholars, postgraduates and PhD-students to account for how they manage the third task (scientific outreach) and compulsory attendance for the PhD-students.

The choice of strategies and how to implement them is also related to what we want to accomplish. Do we want to focus on getting a lesser number of scholars to contribute more regularly or do we prefer to obtain a larger group of scholars that make occasional contributions? If we choose to focus on the former, we should dedicate our efforts to increase the level of integration in existing activities, strategy 1, and combine that with strategy 3 and 4. If we choose to focus on the latter, we should dedicate our efforts to further develop the concept of Wikipedia Days and occasional selective measures. The core would probably be to make participation more attractive for individuals and institutions. Regardless of the chosen path, strategy 2 would probably have a positive impact.

Further information

Meta-wiki contains an information portal that is used as a user portal as well an information portal about the project. Just as any Wikipedia page, the page is free to edit and one can login and edit with one’s Wikipedia credentials (username and password). Maintaining the page and updating the list of participants calls for an elementary understanding of how Wikipedia and other Wikis work. There exists an external editing counter that requires as password and has to be updated manually. That can be arranged in collaboration with David Ohlin who voluntarily manages the editing counter. For the moment, the counter does not include pictures uploaded to Wikipedia, but we are working on solving that issue. The project has an email address (wikipedia@slu.se) that easily can be redirected to the succeeding contact / project manager.

--Arild Vågen, Wikipedian in Academy, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences