Wikimedia and Academia

Teaching Matters Edinburgh

In this episode, University staff (Kirsty Lingstadt), students (Hannah Rothmann, Grace King and Lucy Parfitt) and Wikimedians (Ewan McAndrew and Richard Nevell) discuss Wikimedia's current role within academia and hypothesize what that role can be in the future. This episode is the first of our Wikimedia Series, which aims to recontextualize Wikimedia's role in academia on its 20th anniversary.

The group's conversation begins with each member detailing how they use Wikipedia in their work, then expands to Wikipedia's current and potential role in academia. Throughout, fascinating questions are posed and talked through: Is Wikipedia regulated, and to what extent? What utility does it have in academia? And is there a role for Wikipedia to be a middle ground between academia and the public? This episode serves as a fantastic re-introduction to Wikipedia, and we hope it helps listeners join in on recontextualizing Wikipedia's role in academia on its 20th anniversary.

Timestamps:

2:30 - Introductions with each participant detailing how they use Wikipedia in their work

7:22 - The group entertains Wikipedia's reputation of being unreliable and discusses the role of media literacy

13:33 - The group discusses Wikipedia's potential to be a middle ground between academia and the public

19:30 - The group finishes off the discussion by theorizing Wikipedia's potential role within academia

Ewan McAndrew, The University of Edinburgh's Wikimedian in Residence, provided the following resources for anyone interested in further readings regarding Wikimedia:

• Wikipedia on Olive Schreiner, like it or what?
• Wikimedia in Education (collection of case studies)
• How Wikipedia keeps political discourse from turning ugly (Harvard Business Review article)
• Why didn’t Wikipedia have an article on Donna Strickland, winner of a Nobel Prize? (Wikipedia Foundation article)
• Female Nobel prize winner deemed not important enough for Wikipedia entry (additional article about Donna Strickland from the Guardian)

Music for this episode is provided by Hooksounds. Cover art was created by Eric Berger using a template from http://ereyes.github.io/