User:Markworthen/sandbox/Should psychologists care about Wikipedia article quality?
Wikipedia educates more people about psychology than any other source edit
While textbooks and peer-reviewed journal articles are of course vital to developing the psychological sciences, how much of that knowledge is effectively transmitted to the general public?
Sure, media outlets publish articles and videos on psychological topics, and some of them are quite good, but none of those publishers come close to matching Wikipedia's readership.
Billions of people around the world consult Wikipedia for medical and health information. In addition, as noted by research librarians in a WebJunction[a] webinar: "Wikipedia is a go-to resource for health and medical information, not just for the general public but for health care providers as well. Over 50% of physicians, and 94% of medical students use Wikipedia to find medical information on the internet."[1][2][3]
Nearly 10 billion page views every month edit
Out of all the Wikipedias, the English Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) receives about one-third of the Internet traffic. The remaining two-thirds goes to Wikipedia sites written in languages other than English. Nonetheless, the English-language Wikipedia receives a lot of visitors, who view a lot of articles. In one month alone, en.Wikipedia.org chocked up 9.7 billion page views (July 2020).[4] Plus, many English-language articles are subsequently translated for Wikipedia sites in a variety of other languages.[b]
Should we care whether or not the general public reads well-written, accurate psychology articles? edit
Thus, it is important for psychologists to themselves, "What do I want the public to know about [insert your favorite psychology topic here]?"
If you don't care whether or not the general public reads accurate information about psychology topics then my arguments will fall on deaf ears.
But if you want people around the world to read accurate, well-written articles about psychology-related topics, you might find yourself beginning to care about Wikipedia article quality, and valuing the hard work Wikipedians devote to improving the encyclopedia.
Heck, you might even want to join WikiProject Psychology and become a Wikipedia editor yourself. (And if you do, please feel free to contact me with any questions.) - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 17:32, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Notes edit
- ^ "WebJunction builds the knowledge, skills and confidence of library staff to power strong libraries that are the heart of vibrant communities. A program of OCLC Research, WebJunction is free and welcome to all libraries to use, regardless of size, type or location."
- ^ As of 2020[update] Wikipedia articles have been created in 302 languages.
References edit
- ^ Betha Gutsche, Liz Waltman, and Monika Sengul-Jones, "Why Wikipedia Matters for Health and Medical Information", [webinar], (14 August 2019), webinar recording - on YouTube, webinar PowerPoint slides (PDF - 51 pages).
- ^ James M. Heilman and Andrew G. West, "Wikipedia and Medicine: Quantifying Readership, Editors, and the Significance of Natural Language", Journal of Medical Internet Research 17, no. 3 (2015): e62.
- ^ See also Usaid K. Allahwala, Aniket Nadkarni & Deshan F. Sebaratnam, "Wikipedia use amongst medical students – New insights into the digital revolution", Medical Teacher, 35 no. 4 (2013): 337.
- ^ "Wikistats - Statistics For Wikimedia Projects". stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2020-08-18.
See also edit
Omer Benjakaob, "On Wikipedia, a fight is raging over coronavirus disinformation: A team of medicine enthusiasts has been scrambling to keep disinformation from spreading on the free encyclopaedia", Wired (9 February 2020).
Denise A. Smith, "Situating Wikipedia as a health information resource in various contexts: A scoping review." PLoS ONE 15, no. 2 (2020): e0228786. PDF version of article.
James M. Heilman, et al., "Wikipedia: A Key Tool for Global Public Health Promotion", Journal of Medical Internet Research 13, no. 1 (2011): e14.