Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Molecular Biology/Molecular and Cell Biology/ASCB workshop 2008

This page is to help plan and organize the Wikipedia workshop for the 2008 meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB).

Initial description from the ASCB; plus rewrite

Initial version (July 23, 2008)

On behalf of 2008 American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) Program Chair David Spector and Society President Bob Goldman, it is my privilege to invite you to present a workshop on Wikipedia scheduled for Tuesday, December 16, at 12:30 pm. The Wikipedia Workshop will be a two-hour hands-on session in which every participant will create a Wikipedia account, fix a problem in an existing entry, and produce a polished, referenced, illustrated Wikipedia article on a sorely needed topic, an article that might win fast passage to Good Article or Featured Article status. Users will also become thoroughly familiar with all of the cell biology Wikimedia resources, including the Molecular and Cellular Biology Wikiproject, the Cell Biology Department of Wikiversity, the Cell Biology category list, and the Cell Biology Wikibook. All participants are welcome, and will need a laptop. In addition, a few uncopyrighted images or diagrams to illustrate a cell biology topic would be useful.

Final version (July 30, 2008)

The Wikipedia Workshop will be a hands-on session (Dec. 16, 12:30-2:30) that provides a general introduction to writing cell biology articles on Wikipedia. Every participant will either improve an existing article, or create a new article on a topic that is in the scientific literature, but not yet covered on Wikipedia. In both cases, the articles will be illustrated and referenced to the scientific literature.

In addition to the two workshop presenters, Wikipedia volunteers will be at the workshop and also on-line to assist participants. Online tutorials will be available prior to the conference at this link.

Participants should come to the workshop with their laptops. They should also bring scientific references and 3-4 images/diagrams to illustrate the cell-biology topic of their choice.

Like the PLoS journals, images on Wikipedia are covered by a free-content license (the Creative Commons Attribution license). Therefore the images supplied should either be uncopyrighted, or the copyright should belong to the participants. You will retain the copyright, but these images will be free to be used by others in the future, as long as you are credited.

Draft discussion

Link/forum - I think a link to this page would be best, we can move most of the pre-discussion to this talkpage and set it up as an introduction. This would get people using Wiki as soon as possible. A forum on the ASCB website would divert people away from Wikipedia and not give them any introduction to the site they are wanting to learn about. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:46, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Could you do that? I have a meeting to go to. Thanks, Proteins (talk) 15:51, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi Tim, we had an edit conflict. I re-wrote the invite, with suggestions from a fellow professor, Jennifer Ekstrom; does it seem to be an improvement? Proteins (talk) 15:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Looks good, I'd add "on-hand and on-line" Tim Vickers (talk) 15:50, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'll send this back and cc you a copy. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Done Tim Vickers (talk) 20:45, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Schedule

We'll have only two hours for the workshop, so we should keep the introduction short and get the scientists editing as quickly as possible. It would be best, I think, if we prepared some online materials, so that the scientists can get up to speed in advance, so that our introduction would be largely a review. We might spend a few slides introducing Wikipedia, its communities and its copyright licensing, then give some practical tips for the scientists, such as

• Why Wikipedia? - Visible, free, and up-to-date, written for non-specialists
• No original research: no speculations, no new syntheses of the data - just describe the literature.
• Wikipedia articles are similar to short review articles (<50kB readable text), but written for non-scientists
• Writing typically at the level of an junior undergraduate science major; use wiki-links in lieu of long explanations
• Reference at same rate as review article, or slightly less often; tools & templates for referencing
• Uploading and using images

If we know the topics chosen by the participants in advance, we could think about ways to integrate them with one another. Proteins (talk) 17:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Connecting Wikipedians and external scientists

I think Tim's idea of a "buddy system" for connecting the scientists with online expert Wikipedia editors is excellent, and something we should organize. I think it would also be good to have a real-life buddy system, since I suspect that face-to-face contact will be more personal and memorable than online collaboration alone. It's important, I think, to build personal bridges between the scientific and Wikipedian communities. if we agree, then we can try to recruit experienced Wikipedians from the local San Francisco community to donate a few hours of their time to a worthy cause.

I think this might be an area in which the FA-Team might be able to contribute, although I'm not sure in what way it would work best. For one thing, their involvement might be premature, since the new articles might still be quite rudimentary. Still, many of them seem interested in fostering accessible scientific articles; I was impressed by Awadewit's recent contributions to improving the accessibility of Archaea. Proteins (talk) 17:56, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Online learning materials

Once we have a clear idea of what we'd like to present and how to organize it, we might consider offering some online course materials as pre-workshop reading for the participants. A quick cheat-sheet of the wiki-markup and an illustrative video showing the typical development of a scientific article and individual techniques (e.g., making sections, adding references, adding images, etc.) would be helpful, I think. A text summary of our slides might be good as well, so that our presentation is mostly a review for the participants. Proteins (talk) 18:01, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Planning for unplanned snafus

We should also think about what might go awry and how we might prepare for those snafus. Proteins (talk)

• The simplest snafu would be that some participants don't have laptops, or cannot get access to the Internet.
  • Possible solutions: Have public terminals or extra laptops on-hand. We should check that the Wi-Fi is working well before the workshop.

• A participant has not thought of a topic to work on.
  • Possible solutions: We should try to reach the participants beforehand and specify what would be helpful for them to have done in advance. We could also prepare a list of most-needed topics, possibly ones that might be integrated eventually into a Featured Topic. An undecided scientist could then choose a topic from the list.

• A participant has not brought images, external links or references for their topic.
  • Possible solutions: Early communications with the participants will again be helpful. If we know their topics in advance, we can prepare images, etc. in advance. Otherwise, we can rely on the help of the online and real-world Wikipedians who are "buddied" with the scientists.

Comments from Awadewit

• The best way to become acquainted with Wikipedia is to read through some of its best articles, which are called Featured Articles - I'm not sure this is the best way - this provides a very distorted view of Wikipedia. Most articles on Wikipedia are extremely poor. Such a survey will not convey this.

Reworded.

I actually think people should read the poor articles, too. That is what made me want to start editing Wikipedia - I wanted to fix the disasters that I saw. Awadewit (talk) 15:31, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

• Articles reach this rank only after being vetted in a long review process, usually carried out by Wikipedians associated with a WikiProject (a group of editors interested in a common area). - I don't think "usually" is the case. Most WikiProjects have inactive peer review systems.

Unfortunately very true! Reworded.

• The body is typically written at a junior undergraduate level. - I think this may be true, but may be unfortunate. It assumes a significant level of knowledge. Think, for example, of a physics article. Should one have to be a junior physics major to have to understand the articles? I really hope not.

Reworded to "High school to undergraduate".

• Featured Articles have 3-4 scientific citations per paragraph of text; thus, a Featured Article may have between 100 and 200 scientific references. - You might want to explain that this is to increase Wikipedia's legitimacy and that the citation density is much higher than on academic articles for this reason.

OK, done.

• Bullet-point lists are also used, but less often in Featured Articles. - Lists are generally considered to be poor prose and should be used sparingly.

Deleted.

• The Notes section collects footnotes that are not citations to the scientific literature. - I find this confusing.

Rather few science articles use "Notes", most just use "References", so I just deleted this.

• Scholars are encouraged to create a user account under their real name, such as User:TimVickers, which lends authority to their contributions. - I would strongly recommend against this until people have seriously thought about it. Your name will pop up all over google. Potential employers will see you. If you decide to work on controversial articles, this could become a problem.

Well, I'm biased on this one. I'll leave this for other people to consider! Tim Vickers (talk) 01:31, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I understand, but I think it is only fair to alert people up front. Also, biologists are people who might want to work on creationism-intelligent design articles where anonymity can be even more important. Awadewit (talk) 15:31, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Many things to many people - This is a good essay that might be useful for this workshop.

• Do we need a list of goals or is that just too cheesy?

Please let me know how I can help. I can provide some advice on how to write for the lay person if you want and be available the day of. Awadewit (talk) 01:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Wonderful, thank you! Tim Vickers (talk) 01:31, 13 August 2008 (UTC)