Crowdsourcing, Citizen Science and Edit-a-Thons

Posted by karencoghlan on November 26th, 2019 Posted in: Blog
Tags: Citizen Science, community engagement, credibility, data_science, open science, technology, Wikipedia

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Thank you to all who participated in the Fall 2019 #citeNLM virtual edit-a-thon. In the November crowdsourcing campaign, over 548 articles were edited, over 47 thousand words added, all by 108 editors. To see the amazing work everyone did, check out the #citeNLM Program Dashboard to see statistics on the event.

In addition, if you get the opportunity, try to attend next year’s WikiConference North America either online or in person. This year, the conference was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.The theme was reliability/credibility. There were many great information sessions, posters, meet-ups, open hacking and brainstorming sessions. Many of the sessions were live streamed and recordings are available. It is a great conference for both experienced and novice Wikipedians.

Wikipedia’s health topics pages are visited nearly 7 billion times a year, making it possibly the world’s most visited health information resource. All of us working together, or crowdsourcing, improves Wikipedia’s credibility, reliability, and content. The amazing power of becoming an editor is editing can be done anytime.  If you have specialized knowledge of a topic, see an error or notice missing or incorrect information, or references missing, editors can review, add and correct information at any time. The more people reviewing the content the more reliable it will become.

If you did not get a chance to participate in the latest #citeNLM campaign, it is not too late to become a Wikipedian. There is information about how to become an editor, online training and a guide for organizers for hosting your own edit-a-thon at nnlm.gov and be sure to join us in the Spring for our next #citeNLM  

• The role of Wikipedia and the importance of edit-a-thons 
• How to become a Wikipedia editor
• Citing NLM resources and best practices for editing articles on medical and health topics
• Hosting your own event using the #citeNLM Guide for Organizers

Congratulations everyone for your hard work and thank you again for your help making Wikipedia a credible, reliable resource.