This presentation for developed for a special session on why and how to use Wikipedia for science communication, given at the International Mountain Conference in Innsbruck, in September 2022.

1. IMC 2022 Special Event
Wikipedia for Science:
Why and how to use Wikipedia for
science communication
Photo by Moustafa Elsamadouni from Pexels

2. Today's session
• Introductory presentations and questions
• How we have used Wikipedia for communicating the SDGs
• How you can use Wikipedia for communicating your work
• Practical on starting your journey as a Wikipedia editor (15 min)
• Presentation: Making your first edits
• Practical on making edits (individual or team based) (15 min)
• Presentation: Connecting knowledge and interacting with other editors
• Practical on connecting articles, using talk pages and more (15 min)
• Plenary discussion: session reflections and next steps as a community
of mountain editors

3. Today's team
Elisabeth von Muench
Ostella
Freelance Consultant
Master Wikimedian
Robin Hocquet
SEI
Research Associate
Wikipedia editor
Meadow Poplawsky
SEI
WeADAPT Knowledge
Manager
Wikipedia editor
Julia Barrott
SEI
Research Fellow
Wikipedia editor

4. Why Wikipedia?
An incomplete sphere made of large,
white jigsaw puzzle pieces. Each
puzzle piece contains one glyph from
a different writing system, with each
glyph written in black. Version 1
by Nohat (concept
by Paullusmagnus); Wikimedia. -
File:Wikipedia-logo.svg as of 14 May
2010T23:16:42
• Huge, diverse, global readership: a first stop shop
for information - top 10 most visited websites.
• Significantly more reach and impact than any
other climate change website or online
knowledge portal.
• Makes science more accessible and discoverable.

5. www.adaptationataltitude.org
Why Wikipedia?
 Raise public awareness of and increase attention given to
mountain issues
 Influencing from the grassroots up: public issues become
policy issues
 Even policy officers use Wikipedia…
Mountains are rarely mentioned on relevant pages linked to
climate change and climate change adaptation and vice versa.

6. Wikipedia quick Qs
Show of hands:
Who has used Wikipedia?
Who knows someone who has edited Wikipedia?
How many visits does Wikipedia get per month on average?
500 million 1 billion 5 billion 20 billion
10 billion
Who has edited Wikipedia before?​

7. Wikipedia quick Qs
Show of hands:
Who has used Wikipedia?
Who knows someone who has edited Wikipedia?
How many visits does Wikipedia get per month on average?
500 million 1 billion 5 billion 20 billion
10 billion
Who has edited Wikipedia before?​

8. Daily average pageviews: 1,131
Daily average pageviews: 2,668
Daily average pageviews: 1,716

9. The Communication of SDG-related
research knowledge project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/SDGs/Communication_of_environment_SDGs
Arno Rosemarin
Senior Research Fellow,
Stockholm Environment Institute

10. How you can use Wikipedia for communicating
your work (and why you should!)
• EVERYONE can edit! This is scary and amazing.
• Motivation behind Wikipedia: democratization of knowledge.
• Huge opportunity to make science more accessible to the public.
• There are lots of good editors, but the more experts the better!
• Using Wikipedia for science communication:
• Improving readability – making science/your topic easier to understand
• Updating and adding citations – highlighting the latest research
• Adding new sections and pages – showcase relevant/new topics
• Showing how topics interconnect – improving connections between
related articles so that readers can explore further

11. How you can use Wikipedia for communicating
your work (and why you should!)
• EVERYONE can edit! This is scary and amazing.
• Motivation behind Wikipedia: democratization of knowledge.
• Huge opportunity to make science more accessible to the public.
• There are lots of good editors, but the more experts the better!
• Using Wikipedia for science communication:
• Improving readability – making science/your topic easier to understand
• Updating and adding citations – highlighting the latest research
• Adding new sections and pages – showcase relevant/new topics
• Showing how topics interconnect – improving connections between
related articles so that readers can explore further

12. What we can do as editors
Can you cite your own publications?
YES! But not inappropriately...
Can you share and copy/paste your own content?
YES! But only if it is open access / Creative Commons - ShareAlike.
This is true for all content.
Note - Wikipedia articles must not contain original research!
To demonstrate that you are not adding original research, you must be
able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the
topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented.

13. Assuring quality in Wikipedia
Yes, anyone can edit. But there are protocols in place to assure quality*:
• Community of editors – Wikimedians!
• Editors can 'watch' articles and check edits made by others
• Article talk pages used to discuss major edits or changes to edits
• Key pages are protected or semi-protected… e.g., Climate change
• Quality alerts, e.g.,
• Not recently updated; missing or poor citations, poor formatting...
*Changes slightly between different language versions.

14. A world of Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

15. What we can do as editors
• Make article content more engaging and easier to understand:
• Improve 'leads' - the overview text at the top of the article
• Improve readability, add useful figures, images and videos
• Improve quality:
• Sourcing – robust citations
• Completeness & comprehensiveness
• Embedded links (to and from the article)
• Connectivity to other articles
• Neutrality
EDITING IS EASY! Even small edits can significantly improve an article!

16. Few useful things before we get started...
Creating an account:
Think about an appropriate username. This doesn't need to reflect your real name
unless you want it to!

17. Adjust your Wikipedia preferences to receive
e-mail notifications for changes
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
You'll get an e-mail when someone:
• wrote on your talk page
• edited an article that you are
watching (see watchlist)
• wrote on the talk page of an
article

18. Adjust your Wikipedia preferences to see both
editor tabs Step 1
Step 2
Step 3a
Step 3b

19. Both editor tabs should now be visible
• Edit tab = Visual editor (use this
mainly)
• Edit source tab = HTML type
editor (use this as you get more
experience)
• On talk pages you only have the
edit source tab available

20. Finding your way around
Steps:
• Log into Wikipedia
• Go to the main climate change
article.
• Then look at the top right.

21. There are some important tabs at the top right
of a Wikipedia article Hover over each one to see what it
does.
The first row looks different when
you're not logged in.
First row:
Second row:
Third row (does
not exist for all
articles)

22. What does a red font (red link) mean?
• When you see a red link it means this page doesn't
exist yet.
• Your user profile page, talk page and sandbox will all be
shown in red initially.
• When you click on those red links it will give you the
option of creating these pages.
• Just put some content there, click "publish changes"
and the page gets created.

23. The users Serols, SSSSNack and
Keyriverz don't have user profile pages
yet.
(This example comes from a revision
history page, accessible from the tab
"view history")
Example for red links

24. Put articles of interest on your watchlist by
clicking on the little star at the top right
(watchlist --> email notifications of changes)
Not yet subscribed (default): star is
empty
Subscribed & article is now on the
watchlist: star is filled blue (after
clicking on it)

25. Using your user profile page to say
something about yourself

26. Practical 1:
Starting your journey as a Wikipedia editor
Create an account
Explore features: talk pages, sandbox...
Put a short note on your own user profile page – your interests,
experience and why you want to contribute to Wikipedia.
Write in your sandbox
Add your talk page to your watchlist (and enable e-mail notifications
from Wikipedia).

27. Making your first edits!
Content:
1. Overview of possible edits to make
2. Step by step guidance to making edits
• General edits
• Adding references

28. What kind of edits can I make?
Easy tasks to start with
• Copy editing work:
• Correcting typos
• Simplifying sentences to make them easier
to understand (improving readability)
• Move sentences or paragraphs to improve
the logical flow
• Delete sentences that are superfluous
• Add Wikilinks from one Wikipedia article
to another (details given later)
• Improve the article summary (the "lead" -
about 4 paragraphs / 600 words, this is
the part before the table of contents)
More difficult tasks as you get more
confident
• Add new content (with references)
• Work on images:
• Add images from existing collection (pick
existing ones from Wikimedia Commons)
• Add new images (upload them to
Wikimedia Commons first)
• Remove unsuitable images
• Improve captions of images
• Move content from one Wikipedia article
to another
See also here for recommended tasks for newcomers.

29. Things to note about editing:
• If your change involves new content, you need to provide a
reference for this new content to ensure it's all verifiable. Use
a reference that is deemed a reliable source.
• Keep the audience in mind: it's the general public! Use
encyclopedic style. This is actually not easy for many of us
academics...
• Remind yourself what Wikipedia is and what it is not.

30. The steps for editing are quite intuitive:
• Log in to Wikipedia
• Navigate to the article that you want to edit
• Click on edit
• Make your change (note: one small edit at a time is best)
• If your change involves new content you need to provide a reference for this
new content to ensure it's all verifiable. Use a reference that is deemed a
reliable source.
• Keep the audience in mind: it's the general public! Use encyclopedic style.
• Remind yourself what Wikipedia is and what it is not.
• Click on the button "publish changes" at the top right
• Add a short explanation in the field called "edit summary" to explain to
others what you have done
• Keep the tick for "watch this page" (i.e. the default setting)
• Click on the button "publish changes".

31. Click on "edit" to start editing an article
Basic procedure of making an edit

32. Step 1: add your content, then click "publish
changes" at the top right
Step 2: add
explanation
about your edit
in this box that
will pop up.
Step 3:
click
"publish
changes"
again
Basic procedure of making an edit

33. How to add a new reference
(also called citation or source)
• References go at the end of a sentence (after the fullstop),
not in mid-sentence.
• Do not use academic writing such as "Smith et al.
(2022) found that x is proportional to y". Rather state it as
a fact plus reference: "x is proportional to y".[5] There is no
need to mention author names in the text.
• Remember: Do not include original research, i.e. your own
thinking or conclusions.

34. How to add
a reference
Step 1: Click on edit
Step 2: Put the cursor
where you want to add the
reference
Step 3: click here
Step 4: Select
"automatic" or one
of the other 2 tabs
Step 5: Add DOI here, then click "generate"

35. Step 6: Click "insert".
After you clicked "generate"
in Step 5 it comes up with
the reference, already nicely
formatted (you can adjust
details later).

36. End result of adding a reference
End result: Number 42 is
your new reference (it
appears in full in the
reference list)

37. Using the same reference more than once
You can copy the little number in square brackets to
somewhere else to use the same reference twice.

38. Some good practices:
Make edits that improve the quality of the Wikipedia article (e.g. with
regards to readability or content)
Conform with guidelines, see e.g. Manual of Style
Base edits on reliable sources so they are verifiable
Demonstrate your legitimacy as an editor by providing information on
your user page
Avoid a huge number of changes in one go, without a
good justification
Ensure edits don't suggest a conflict of interest (e.g., a person
only adding their own publications to lots of Wikipedia articles)
As a new editor you will initially be watched with curiosity by the other
more experienced editors. It's good to earn their trust quickly
by following guidelines and taking advice on talk pages.

39.  Get together in groups of 2-3 people
 Go to the article in your handout or choose your own
 Tell us if you choose your own - we don't want to have two groups on one article!
 (You may more want to try specialized articles with lower pageviews first.)
 Make a minor edit(s)
 This could be minor changes to a sentence.
 Suggestions on handouts for those feeling braver!
 Be sure to add a comment on what edit you have made and why when prompted –
this helps others see and understand what you have done and why.
 Add the page to your watchlist.
Practical 2:
Making your first edits

40. Connecting knowledge and
interacting with other editors
Content:
1. Improving interconnectivity of articles
2. Why and how to interact with other Wikipedians - being
part of the community
3. How to find help with Wikipedia editing

41. Example of interrelated Wikipedia articles
Climate change
Effects of climate change
Effects of climate change
on human health Retreat of glaciers since
1850
Glacial lake
outburst flood
Water scarcity in
India
Pamir mountains
Himalayas
Effects of climate change
on ecosystems
Geography
articles
Main
overview
articles
More
detailed
articles
Effects of climate change
on mountain ecosystems
Does not exist yet; probably too detailed;
could linger at low pageviews
Science,
technology,
concepts
Mountain

42. Using wikilinks: Internally linking from one
Wikipedia article to another one
Click on "edit". The rest is intuitive
and is done in the same way as
how you would insert a hyperlink
in a Word document.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3

43. Decide when to use summary style and
when to link to sub-articles
This is the main "mountain" Wikipedia
article. A high level article that uses
summary style for topics that are
covered in sub-articles.
It gets about 1800 pageviews per day
(see here).

44. Why and how to interact with
other Wikipedians
• You are going to interact with other Wikipedians – real
people! (and to a small extent with bots who do vandalism
control, for example).
• Why interact with other editors:
• Wikipedia is a "community effort" for the greater good.
• This work is all about consensus building!
• More experienced people will provide feedback and sometimes
correct, improve or undo your edits.
• Assume that everyone is acting in good faith! Try not to be
too sensitive but open minded.
• If you feel that you have been treated unkindly, you can point out
this policy to others, which should help: Please do not bite the
newcomers

45. How to interact with other Wikipedians
• Interactions mostly take place on talk pages. This can be
• article talk pages (very common)
• user talk page (less common).
• You can ping other users like this: "Hi [[User:EMsmile]], can you
please explain XX". This will send an e-mail to User EMsmile.
• Enable e-mail notifications in your preferences: An e-mail in your
inbox will alert you that someone is trying to communicate with
you via an article talk page or via your own talk page.
(Some screenshots of talk pages follow.)

46. Every Wikipedia article has a talk page associated with it. This is where editors can discuss
improvements. Just click on the "talk" tab.

47. It has a table of contents (gets generated automatically).
The most recent content is always at the bottom.
To add something click on "edit source" (talk pages
only have the source editor, not the visual editor)
Example: talk page for "Effects of
climate change"

48. This is how the "source editor" looks for a talk page
(after clicking on "edit source").
Notice the HTML markups with generate headings,
indenting, bullet points and so forth.
When adding a comment:
• Add your comment at
the bottom of the page.
• Use the indenting
with colons to create a
thread with multiple
answers (:, ::, :::).

49. When adding a comment:
• End your comment with:
~~~~ as this will create a
"time and date
signature"

50. These signatures show who
added a comment when
(EMsmile is me, Femke is
another Wikipedian)

51. This is what you can expect from your
interactions with other Wikipedians
Feel good moments
• Interesting discussions on article talk pages
(example) which help you to learn about a
topic.
• Friendly comments on your own user talk
page (mine looks like this).
• Learning about publications, content,
connections etc. that you didn't know about.
• Seeing your own publications cited in
Wikipedia articles.
• Sometimes "meeting" new and interesting
collaborators
Feel bad moments
• Somebody commented about your work on
an article talk page that puts your work in a
negative light. - Stay calm and polite.
• Someone left a negative, annoying,
disruptive comment on your user talk page. -
Stay calm and polite.
• You receive a notification that one of your
edits infringed copyright (example) - usually
this is justified.
• One of your edits has been undone. - Stay
calm, do not enter an edit war.

52. Use the search box at the top
right of a Wikipedia article to
search for helpful content by
adding "WP:" before your
search term.
This example will search for a
page on "manual of style"
within the internal Wikipedia
pages.
Further examples:
WP:help
WP:images
WP:conflict of interest
WP:reliable sources
Finding help and guidelines

53. Finding help from other mountain
Wikipedia people
• Send an e-mail to Julia Barrott <julia.barrott@sei.org>
• To discuss:
• Set up and use a Telegram group? Slack channel? Mail list?
• Use the talk page of a relevant WikiProject group
• Compare with talk page of WikiProject Climate Change.
• Compare with discussion page of WikiProject Mountains.
---> As a novice, it's ideal if you have a Wikipedia mentor,
someone whom you can easily contact.

54. In your group:
look at the article(s) you are editing; can they be
linked to each other, or other pages?
Write on some article talk pages to suggest
improvements for that article.
Remember to sign off with four tides to add your
username and date to end of your comment:
~~~~
Practial 3:
Connecting articles and using talk pages

55. Take home messages
• Improving existing Wikipedia articles is impactful and satisfying.
• You can edit Wikipedia.
• If you edit Wikipedia you should follow Wikipedia's guidelines.
• There are some similarities to academic writing (e.g. the need to
use reliable sources)
• There are also some key differences (should be understandable to
anyone, no original research, no (unpublished) opinions)
• There is a community of editors behind each Wikipedia article:
interact with them!
• This is a collaborative, multi-author effort for the greater good.

56. DISCUSSION – Mountains of Wikipedia CoP?
 What next? What would you like to do?
 Ongoing communication?
 Slack channel? Mailing list?
 Online meet-ups?
 Ongoing collaboration?
 WikiProject: Mountains
 Anyone interested in hosting an edit-a-thon (online or in
person)?

57. Compendium of resources
www.weadapt.org/mountains
https://weadapt.org/Wiki4Mountains