7 ms·

Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial

87 points by nabla9 5y ago

nabla9 5y ago
> In the months after uploading it, an average new Wikipedia article in Chemistry is read tens of thousands of times and causes changes to hundreds of related scientific journal articles. ... Patterns in these changes suggest that Wikipedia articles are used as review articles ... we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations.
- Vanit 5y ago
  > we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations. Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. In university I quickly learned that the best assignment hack was to harvest Wikipedia references.
- oefrha 5y ago
  > we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations. I also found very casual evidence that some people abuse the shit out of it for self-promotion (which is hardly surprising).
ylee 5y ago
I've seen blog posts, news articles, forum comments, and YouTube videos based on my Wikipedia edits. Always gratifying to know that my work is being read.
blueblisters 5y ago
Science needs review articles which can be a) updated b) peer reviewed c) attributed to the authorship Wikipedia solves a but isn't great for b or c.
- austinjp 5y ago
  Academia has responded to (a) with the "living review" [0]. It's a step in the right direction, I guess, but I can't help feeling that it's gatekeeping, and fails to be as dynamic as it might. Efforts such as TRIP database [1] are also operating in this domain, trying to bring computational solutions to dusty old academic processes. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_review https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_review [1] https://www.tripdatabase.com/ https://www.tripdatabase.com/
- kelnage 5y ago
  Absolutely agree - but most good quality WP articles will include a range of references to primary literature that helps with b and c!
- aurelian15 5y ago
  Building something like this was kind of the idea of Scholarpedia [1], founded by Eugene M. Izhikevich (theoretical neuroscientist). The articles are reviews written by experts in the field, peer-reviewed, and supposed to be updated over time. Most articles happen to be in neuroscience and related fields, but that was more an accident and not by design. Unfortunately, the project has never really taken off, and only few new articles have been added over the past few years. And of course, just as I am writing this comment, I realize that [2] now redirects to some domain squatter and is blacklisted by my DNS server... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarpedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarpedia [2] https://scholarpedia.org/ https://scholarpedia.org/
  - Asraelite 5y ago
    > [2] now redirects to some domain squatter and is blacklisted by my DNS server... I hope this is temporary, I found Scholarpedia very useful for certain scientific topics where Wikipedia didn't go into quite enough detail.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
gscott 5y ago
Right now Wikipedia is run more like an anti-spam organization, the editors (random people) are busy deleting anything added. A Wikipedia 2.0 is needed... one where edits are put into a queue rather then having someone come in ten minutes later and delete your edit simply because it is live immediately. Some years ago there was an NPR story on women in academia and how one decided to get together 50 top female academics in their fields and update Wikipedia in their subject matter that they hold PHD's in and work at Universities teaching about. Waste of time, all deleted. Wikipedia is great but its emphasis is on deletion. A new Wikipedia needs to be made with an emphasis on addition and depth.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  There must be more to the story than that. I've made many edits and I don't recall any being deleted. Maybe they didn't follow the rules.
  - solresol 5y ago
    It matches my experience. I can update pages about some topics (e.g. backup, tape drives, backup products) and nothing gets deleted or changed. But there are others where everything I update gets reverted with a comment like "reverted good faith edit from ____"
    - dataviz1000 5y ago
      This might be a case of the Law of triviality[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
    - yorwba 5y ago
      I think the expected reaction to having your good faith edits reverted is to reconsider whether it's an improvement to the article, and if it is, reapply it and potentially start a discussion on the talk page. If they keep reverting, they'll eventually get blocked from doing so.
  - input_sh 5y ago
austinjp 5y ago
I find it unfortunate that the academic discussions I witness tend towards "Wikipedia bad" rather than a more nuanced understanding. Some aspects of Wikipedia are great, and academia still has a lot to learn from web technologies.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  > I find it unfortunate that the academic discussions I witness tend towards "Wikipedia bad" rather than a more nuanced understanding. Some aspects of Wikipedia are great, and academia still has a lot to learn from web technologies. No Wikipedia is bad, it has become a subtle but effective political propaganda tool that reflects only a certain point of view, it is not a encyclopedia by the definition of the word. It takes stances on wedge issues by the sole fact that it eliminates any sources its editors do not agree with. When you only source assertions from a tiny number of sources you know only reflect your point of view then you are badly biased. https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ The author is Wikipedia's co-founder, so he knows what he is talking about.
  - gremlinsinc 5y ago
    that article is SEVERELY biased to the right. > Or to take an up-to-the-minute issue, the LGBT adoption article includes several talking points in favor of LGBT adoption rights, but omits any arguments against. What if we replace LGBT "rights" with Jewish Rights during the Holocaust. It'd go something like: just because "liberals" think Jews deserve to live, and we should all have equal rights, that maybe we should also have a fair "view" or balanced "insight" into Hitler's side of the argument, so people can choose for themselves whether they want to be racist or genocidal or not. Tolerance isn't for everyone, we should be tolerant of those not tolerant of anybody who isn't white, no? SMH. It's an encyclopedia, facts should matter, if you're peeved that liberal facts are often more true or accurate than those based on crapola like the bible or oil-industry-endorsed climate change studies, or Presidential decrees that Bleach cures Covid-19, then honestly you should probably just stick to your facebook echo chambers, and please stay away from public platforms and politics in general. I saw a meme once about the right trolling itself where they basically said -- GUYS stop showing statistics and studies they're all against us. Yes, they are, not because they're fabricated but because the conservative worldview is extremely warped and often just insane. I mean 86% of flat-earthers are conservative. The majority of people who believe in bigfoot, also conservative. Only 32% of conservatives believe in evolution and there's probably a HUGE percent that believe the world was created 8k years ago by God (factually impossible). Sure, Wikipedia should strive for FACTUAL neutrality, but not when facts are from a dogmatic source like the bible, it could still show those "facts" as it were as an "opinion" by Christian Seminologists, for example, however the majority of historians and archaelogists find flaws see: <insert page> etc... Most articles I've ever read have been pretty darn good, I haven't seen much in way of not-neutral, but then I think neutrality doesn't mean allowing bigots free reign either.
js8 5y ago
There is too much damn scientific articles because we optimized system for publishing output, and the best journals are expensive, so I am not surprised people are turning to human-indexing system (in this case Wikipedia) to make sense of it all. I am not a scientist, but I do read articles that are referenced from Wikipedia occasionally.
arc-in-space 5y ago
See also: Wikipedia matters, Hinnosaar et al 2019. http://www.marit.hinnosaar.net/wikipediamatters.pdf http://www.marit.hinnosaar.net/wikipediamatters.pdf > randomization of edits to foreign languages’ Wikipedia entries about an obscure Spanish city increases tourism to the city from those foreign countries by 9%
LF2 5y ago
Shgsko kjveh jgdjk hjdbkbd jgfnk kdbbk jbnnd jdbbdn kskwlv jvfpvnd o kdbbk jdbbdn HN de jgdjk jdbbdn OS jgdjk OS nejgdkfgk x jdhd jhdjdjdjd hdhdjd ishhsj hdhdh kkwcjv kdbbdijvdjbdbdndnsndjwjwcwkwvwb
rvba 5y ago
The newest fad in Wikipedia is adding multiple quotes in each article. Then articles are not concise anymore, but full of "X said" irrelevant garbage. I think that often this is self promotion. Ive seen articles where there is a short text and 5 long quotes - that could be summed up with 2 or 3 sentences. Now try yo clean this up without an edit war...
- Kim_Bruning 5y ago
  That could be one of 2 or 3 things. Can you link an example or 2?
  - rvba 5y ago
    Concerning the self promotion - I will unfortunately not provide you the link, because that would lead to you learning the name of my Wikipedia account. For your information: I tried to remove the quotes - by making 3 concise sentences. At this time I see that someone already added back - but this time the whole bulk of the text (so again not keeping it short). The bulk of the text is explaining who are the quoted people. It starts with a famous professor from university X, who said Y. Then there are two "randoms" quoted with their full titles and positions (they are not professors, but random PHDs from Y) - who are probably trying to self promote, since they have an opinion on something - that got quoted on Wikipedia. As for the trend about adding quotes to articles. This partially depends on taste - what each person likes, or dislikes. In my opinion there is a lot of value when an encyclopedia entry is concise synthesis of relevant information - so generally no quotes, just inline text. I dont care that X said this, Y said that, Z said something else - with full quotes. This can be rewritten to be concise with quotes in footnotes. I also dont care about barely relevant stories - that make the articles longer and full of worthless trivia. Here is an example of some random article that I found some time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_beetle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_beetle [disclaimer: I never edited it, just stumbled upon it] The article is about ground beetles, yet it has: 1) a "story" consisting of a long quote how Charles Darwin was hit in his eye by a bombardier beetle and it hurt. Multiple sentences of fluff 2) Even later, is an even more nonsensical quote, which sounds like some sort of fan service related to Darwin: "No poet ever felt more delight at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing in Stephen's Illustrations of British Insects the magic words, "captured by C. Darwin, " I have nothing against Charles Darwin, but how is his eye story relevant to an article about ground beetles? Shouldnt the article text focus on well... nettles and then simply have a "fun fact" section at the end, that would say: Charles Darwin got once hit in his eye by a beetle? Unfortunately with the current trend of adding such quotes it is really difficult to remove them. I dont even bother to try - someone will immediately revert this, because such quotes supposedly make the articles more fun (for 12 year olds?). More and more articles are full of such fluff. I have nothing against having a "fun fact" section, but seriously, quotes inside bulk of articles are such a waste of time.
jaclaz 5y ago
Personally, I like Wikipedia, for its "direct" and "succinct" information, BUT every single time I read an article, I have to remember to NOT fall in the Dunning-Kruger effect, reference has some irony, as it is IMHO not at all hypothetical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect or, alternatively, that I am not instead suffering of the (fictional) Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes... so I do check the Wikipedia page for something I already know about, find the outdated (or plainly wrong, or both) info in order to not fall in it.

87 points by nabla9 5y ago

> In the months after uploading it, an average new Wikipedia article in Chemistry is read tens of thousands of times and causes changes to hundreds of related scientific journal articles. ... Patterns in these changes suggest that Wikipedia articles are used as review articles ... we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations.

Vanit 5y ago
> we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations. Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. In university I quickly learned that the best assignment hack was to harvest Wikipedia references.
oefrha 5y ago
> we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations. I also found very casual evidence that some people abuse the shit out of it for self-promotion (which is hardly surprising).

ylee 5y ago

I've seen blog posts, news articles, forum comments, and YouTube videos based on my Wikipedia edits. Always gratifying to know that my work is being read.

blueblisters 5y ago

Science needs review articles which can be a) updated b) peer reviewed c) attributed to the authorship Wikipedia solves a but isn't great for b or c.

austinjp 5y ago
Academia has responded to (a) with the "living review" [0]. It's a step in the right direction, I guess, but I can't help feeling that it's gatekeeping, and fails to be as dynamic as it might. Efforts such as TRIP database [1] are also operating in this domain, trying to bring computational solutions to dusty old academic processes. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_review https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_review [1] https://www.tripdatabase.com/ https://www.tripdatabase.com/
kelnage 5y ago
Absolutely agree - but most good quality WP articles will include a range of references to primary literature that helps with b and c!
aurelian15 5y ago
Building something like this was kind of the idea of Scholarpedia [1], founded by Eugene M. Izhikevich (theoretical neuroscientist). The articles are reviews written by experts in the field, peer-reviewed, and supposed to be updated over time. Most articles happen to be in neuroscience and related fields, but that was more an accident and not by design. Unfortunately, the project has never really taken off, and only few new articles have been added over the past few years. And of course, just as I am writing this comment, I realize that [2] now redirects to some domain squatter and is blacklisted by my DNS server... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarpedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarpedia [2] https://scholarpedia.org/ https://scholarpedia.org/
- Asraelite 5y ago
  > [2] now redirects to some domain squatter and is blacklisted by my DNS server... I hope this is temporary, I found Scholarpedia very useful for certain scientific topics where Wikipedia didn't go into quite enough detail.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

gscott 5y ago

Right now Wikipedia is run more like an anti-spam organization, the editors (random people) are busy deleting anything added. A Wikipedia 2.0 is needed... one where edits are put into a queue rather then having someone come in ten minutes later and delete your edit simply because it is live immediately. Some years ago there was an NPR story on women in academia and how one decided to get together 50 top female academics in their fields and update Wikipedia in their subject matter that they hold PHD's in and work at Universities teaching about. Waste of time, all deleted. Wikipedia is great but its emphasis is on deletion. A new Wikipedia needs to be made with an emphasis on addition and depth.

exporectomy 5y ago
There must be more to the story than that. I've made many edits and I don't recall any being deleted. Maybe they didn't follow the rules.
- solresol 5y ago
  It matches my experience. I can update pages about some topics (e.g. backup, tape drives, backup products) and nothing gets deleted or changed. But there are others where everything I update gets reverted with a comment like "reverted good faith edit from ____"
  - dataviz1000 5y ago
    This might be a case of the Law of triviality[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
  - yorwba 5y ago
    I think the expected reaction to having your good faith edits reverted is to reconsider whether it's an improvement to the article, and if it is, reapply it and potentially start a discussion on the talk page. If they keep reverting, they'll eventually get blocked from doing so.
- input_sh 5y ago

austinjp 5y ago

I find it unfortunate that the academic discussions I witness tend towards "Wikipedia bad" rather than a more nuanced understanding. Some aspects of Wikipedia are great, and academia still has a lot to learn from web technologies.

throw_m239339 5y ago
> I find it unfortunate that the academic discussions I witness tend towards "Wikipedia bad" rather than a more nuanced understanding. Some aspects of Wikipedia are great, and academia still has a lot to learn from web technologies. No Wikipedia is bad, it has become a subtle but effective political propaganda tool that reflects only a certain point of view, it is not a encyclopedia by the definition of the word. It takes stances on wedge issues by the sole fact that it eliminates any sources its editors do not agree with. When you only source assertions from a tiny number of sources you know only reflect your point of view then you are badly biased. https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ The author is Wikipedia's co-founder, so he knows what he is talking about.
- gremlinsinc 5y ago
  that article is SEVERELY biased to the right. > Or to take an up-to-the-minute issue, the LGBT adoption article includes several talking points in favor of LGBT adoption rights, but omits any arguments against. What if we replace LGBT "rights" with Jewish Rights during the Holocaust. It'd go something like: just because "liberals" think Jews deserve to live, and we should all have equal rights, that maybe we should also have a fair "view" or balanced "insight" into Hitler's side of the argument, so people can choose for themselves whether they want to be racist or genocidal or not. Tolerance isn't for everyone, we should be tolerant of those not tolerant of anybody who isn't white, no? SMH. It's an encyclopedia, facts should matter, if you're peeved that liberal facts are often more true or accurate than those based on crapola like the bible or oil-industry-endorsed climate change studies, or Presidential decrees that Bleach cures Covid-19, then honestly you should probably just stick to your facebook echo chambers, and please stay away from public platforms and politics in general. I saw a meme once about the right trolling itself where they basically said -- GUYS stop showing statistics and studies they're all against us. Yes, they are, not because they're fabricated but because the conservative worldview is extremely warped and often just insane. I mean 86% of flat-earthers are conservative. The majority of people who believe in bigfoot, also conservative. Only 32% of conservatives believe in evolution and there's probably a HUGE percent that believe the world was created 8k years ago by God (factually impossible). Sure, Wikipedia should strive for FACTUAL neutrality, but not when facts are from a dogmatic source like the bible, it could still show those "facts" as it were as an "opinion" by Christian Seminologists, for example, however the majority of historians and archaelogists find flaws see: <insert page> etc... Most articles I've ever read have been pretty darn good, I haven't seen much in way of not-neutral, but then I think neutrality doesn't mean allowing bigots free reign either.

js8 5y ago

There is too much damn scientific articles because we optimized system for publishing output, and the best journals are expensive, so I am not surprised people are turning to human-indexing system (in this case Wikipedia) to make sense of it all. I am not a scientist, but I do read articles that are referenced from Wikipedia occasionally.

arc-in-space 5y ago

See also: Wikipedia matters, Hinnosaar et al 2019. http://www.marit.hinnosaar.net/wikipediamatters.pdf http://www.marit.hinnosaar.net/wikipediamatters.pdf > randomization of edits to foreign languages’ Wikipedia entries about an obscure Spanish city increases tourism to the city from those foreign countries by 9%

LF2 5y ago

Shgsko kjveh jgdjk hjdbkbd jgfnk kdbbk jbnnd jdbbdn kskwlv jvfpvnd o kdbbk jdbbdn HN de jgdjk jdbbdn OS jgdjk OS nejgdkfgk x jdhd jhdjdjdjd hdhdjd ishhsj hdhdh kkwcjv kdbbdijvdjbdbdndnsndjwjwcwkwvwb

rvba 5y ago

The newest fad in Wikipedia is adding multiple quotes in each article. Then articles are not concise anymore, but full of "X said" irrelevant garbage. I think that often this is self promotion. Ive seen articles where there is a short text and 5 long quotes - that could be summed up with 2 or 3 sentences. Now try yo clean this up without an edit war...

Kim_Bruning 5y ago
That could be one of 2 or 3 things. Can you link an example or 2?
- rvba 5y ago
  Concerning the self promotion - I will unfortunately not provide you the link, because that would lead to you learning the name of my Wikipedia account. For your information: I tried to remove the quotes - by making 3 concise sentences. At this time I see that someone already added back - but this time the whole bulk of the text (so again not keeping it short). The bulk of the text is explaining who are the quoted people. It starts with a famous professor from university X, who said Y. Then there are two "randoms" quoted with their full titles and positions (they are not professors, but random PHDs from Y) - who are probably trying to self promote, since they have an opinion on something - that got quoted on Wikipedia. As for the trend about adding quotes to articles. This partially depends on taste - what each person likes, or dislikes. In my opinion there is a lot of value when an encyclopedia entry is concise synthesis of relevant information - so generally no quotes, just inline text. I dont care that X said this, Y said that, Z said something else - with full quotes. This can be rewritten to be concise with quotes in footnotes. I also dont care about barely relevant stories - that make the articles longer and full of worthless trivia. Here is an example of some random article that I found some time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_beetle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_beetle [disclaimer: I never edited it, just stumbled upon it] The article is about ground beetles, yet it has: 1) a "story" consisting of a long quote how Charles Darwin was hit in his eye by a bombardier beetle and it hurt. Multiple sentences of fluff 2) Even later, is an even more nonsensical quote, which sounds like some sort of fan service related to Darwin: "No poet ever felt more delight at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing in Stephen's Illustrations of British Insects the magic words, "captured by C. Darwin, " I have nothing against Charles Darwin, but how is his eye story relevant to an article about ground beetles? Shouldnt the article text focus on well... nettles and then simply have a "fun fact" section at the end, that would say: Charles Darwin got once hit in his eye by a beetle? Unfortunately with the current trend of adding such quotes it is really difficult to remove them. I dont even bother to try - someone will immediately revert this, because such quotes supposedly make the articles more fun (for 12 year olds?). More and more articles are full of such fluff. I have nothing against having a "fun fact" section, but seriously, quotes inside bulk of articles are such a waste of time.

jaclaz 5y ago

Personally, I like Wikipedia, for its "direct" and "succinct" information, BUT every single time I read an article, I have to remember to NOT fall in the Dunning-Kruger effect, reference has some irony, as it is IMHO not at all hypothetical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect or, alternatively, that I am not instead suffering of the (fictional) Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes... so I do check the Wikipedia page for something I already know about, find the outdated (or plainly wrong, or both) info in order to not fall in it.