The Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) and Wikimedia South Africa (WMZA) convened the first African Wikipedia edit-a-thon on climate change in Cape Town from 6-8 August. The aim of the event was to enhance the quality and accessibility of information on climate change on the world’s largest encyclopedia.
The edit-a-thon brought together 30 African researchers from east, west, and southern Africa and represented 10 countries: Ghana, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Namibia, Botswana, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Although not traditionally seen as an important platform for research dissemination, Wikipedia provides readily accessible information to millions in the broader public, including policymakers and other stakeholder groups. It receives, on average, 19 billion page views a month.
Wikipedia can also boost the impact of research. Thompson and Hanley (2018) found that scientific articles referenced in Wikipedia receive more citations, suggesting that Wikipedia complements the traditional journal system by pointing researchers to key underlying scientific articles.
Day 1
The first day included training from Wikimedia ZA (WMZA) on the basics of editing Wikipedia, as well as an exercise called 1lib1ref to start participants off with adding citations to existing unreferenced statements on Wikipedia. Participants then went on to make small edits to pages related to their research expertise, or pages that they had previously identified as wanting to add to. Most of these edits were small changes to wording or factual corrections. During this time, the WMZA representatives were on hand to assist people on an individual basis.
Day 2 & 3
The second day started by grouping participants into groups according to pages they wanted to edit. In practice this meant there were four large groups: climate change adaptation; climate change and agriculture; climate change in Africa; and drylands, and then a couple of others who were working on other pages individually. Each group had an appointed lead, who helped coordinate inputs and facilitate the discussion around the structure of the page. Most groups found Google Docs to be the most effective way of coordinating simultaneous inputs, and it also allowed for peer review by colleagues around the table.
Outcomes of the edit-a-thon
The researchers tackled some major gaps on Wikipedia where Africa-related content was lacking and found opportunities to improve the content, which although we had originally identified, we did not realise the extent of the issue. Those in groups used the opportunity to leverage their collective knowledge and understanding to edit larger topics on existing Wikipedia pages such as climate change in Africa, climate change adaptation, climate change and agriculture and drylands.
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