Wikipedia is mirror that reflects the world around it. Sometimes the reflections are accurate, other times they get distorted. [1] Either way, we can look at the data in Wikipedia to see which reflections are being looked at the most using powerful analytics tools that are part of the platform.

Two weeks ago, as part of Physiology Friday, I gave a talk examining how biographies of scientists are viewed in Wikipedia, using the crude measure of PageViews.

Melissa Highton from the University of Edinburgh also gave a talk about the Edinburgh Seven, changing the way stories are told and their Wikipedian in Residence scheme.

Our convenor, Andy Mabbett (normally found on a Brompton) gave a talk introducing Wikimedia since our reason for being there was to recruit and train new editors of Wikipedia.

Thanks to the Physiological Society for having us and Anisha Tailor for putting the program together.

References

1. Samoilenko, Anna; Yasseri, Taha (2014). “The distorted mirror of Wikipedia: a quantitative analysis of Wikipedia coverage of academics”. EPJ Data Science. Springer Publishing. 3 (1). arXiv:1310.8508 doi:10.1140/epjds20