I grew up in a country where abortion was neither legal nor uncommon. While I never found myself in need of access to an abortion, I had friends and acquaintances who did. Whether a person was able to find a doctor willing to perform the procedure, or whether they tried to source an abortifacient from a pharmacist or someone who knew about herb, they did so with only the minimum of knowledge. In those pre-internet days, information was hard to come by, and accurate information harder still. These days things are different, there’s a wealth of information available online, but people have a hard time deciding what to trust.

This summer, I worked with a Wiki Scholars course sponsored by the Society of Family Planning (SFP). Like the three previous iterations of the course, the participants worked on a range of articles related to reproductive health, including topics like Abortion in North Carolina, Abortion in Wisconsin, ectopic pregnancy and healthcare and the LGBT community.

Ideally, there should never be need for self-induced abortion, but as long as demand for abortion doesn’t match the availability of abortion performed under the supervision of a medical provider, it’s important for Wikipedia to have the best information possible. While people should never be coming to Wikipedia for medical advice, the fact that they do means that we need to have the best information possible in Wikipedia’s medical articles. A participant in this SFP class improved the self-induced abortion article, as have participants in previous groups.

Aid Access is an organization which provides access to medical abortion by mail in the United States. Their Wikipedia article was created by a participant in this class. Other people worked on the medical abortion (also known as medicinal abortion) article, an article that has also seen improvements from previous groups. Approximately 40% of all abortions in the United States use medication to cause abortion, and experts have expected that number to increase since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, readers looking for more information about telehealth options for abortion care have better information thanks to these new Wikipedia editors.

Regardless of how things proceed in the coming years in the US, people will continue to see pregnancy terminations in places where the option of doing it safely is either not available or not affordable. And even where access to safe, affordable abortion services do exist, access to accurate information allows them to make better decisions for themselves. I am proud to have had the opportunity to support these remarkable Wiki Scholars, many of whom were working in hospitals while the COVID-19 pandemic rages.

To see a current list of course offerings, visit learn.wikiedu.org. To sponsor a similar initiative to increase access to crucial information, visit partner.wikiedu.org.

Community means different things to different people. Wikipedia says community is “a social unit…with commonality such as norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area…or in virtual space through communication platforms.” Through the Society of Family Planning Wiki Scholars Program, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that while it may seem vast and amorphous, Wikipedia is a place to find community.

As a scholar, I was connected with like-minded health care professionals and public health researchers. Our common goal was to create or improve Wikipedia articles related to family planning and reproductive health, so the most accurate information was available to the world. Through our weekly chats, I learned about the other scholars’ areas of interest and got ideas about how to improve my own articles about infections of the female reproductive system and postpartum medical care.

We were incredibly fortunate to learn from Wikipedia experts, who showed us not only the basics of how to edit and create articles on Wikipedia, but also that Wikipedia works because it is created and maintained by a community of folks across the globe. I find it inspiring that individuals take on the responsibility of various roles in order to keep Wikipedia functional, accurate, and true to its mission. These members offer friendly pushback when articles are edited and also engage in less glamorous tasks like checking article references and correcting grammar. This powerful force ensures that Wikipedia stays alive and well, and makes me feel proud of the work my cohort of scholars and others engage in to deliver accurate information to the public.

So, to anyone on the fence of whether you should edit Wikipedia articles, I say go for it! And you will learn not only how easy it can be to add knowledge to this amazing resource, but also find a sense of community while doing it.

“Is Wikipedia always right?” queried my ever-curious seven year old. I was selected to be a participant in a weekly 12 session Wiki Scholar program sponsored by the Society of Family Planning. The somewhat intimidating goal was to learn the process of updating and curating reproductive health articles on Wikipedia. Our virtual sessions were scheduled on Mondays at 11am PST- an ideal time for my focus and solitude… until the global COVID-19 pandemic hit. Despite my best efforts of privacy and attempts at hiding, my Wiki Scholar Zoom sessions were frequently interrupted by my seven year old requesting assistance with his homeschool journal or wanting to say hi to my cohort of scholars. Finally, he asked me,  “what exactly is YOUR job at Wikipedia?”

I am a board-certified Obstetrician/Gynecologist and I provide abortion care — I was excited and a bit nervous about the perceived impact of updating family planning articles on Wikipedia. I explained to my child that Wikipedia is the go-to resource for millions of individuals for just about anything. But I also cautioned him that just because it was on Wikipedia, didn’t make it true. So, in answer to his questions, I informed him that Wikipedia is not always right and my “job” was to try and find the sections in health care (my expertise), where updates were needed.

Together we Wikipedia’d his favorite things like Darth Vader and Harry Potter to the things he dreads like flu shots and tomatoes. I showed him the updates that I had contributed to transgender sex work, abortion restrictions during COVID-19, and types of abortion restrictions in the United States. He was impressed that I was an “author” on Wikipedia. This mainstream integration of Wikipedia has persisted in his world when he squealed in excitement that Wikipedia was being utilized in the cartoon Smurfs movie.

Recently, we went on a bicycle ride through some trails near our home and spotted a two foot striped snake on the side of the path. We observed it from a distance in awe and trepidation as it slithered away into the underbrush. My son looked at me with a glimmer of intrigue in his deep hazel eyes and said, “I’ll race you home. We need to Wikipedia that snake!” Another committed user is born!

To see our open Wikipedia training courses, visit learn.wikiedu.org.

That’s why Wiki Scholars in our current Wikipedia training course sponsored by the Society of Family Planning are rising to the challenge of keeping Wikipedia information on family planning up-to-date.

Urgency has always driven this group to edit Wikipedia, one of the leading sources of health information in the world. When one considers Wikipedia’s daily traffic of hundreds of thousands, the question “What do I want my patients to know right now?” becomes “What do I want the world to know right now?” So one Wiki Scholar went straight to Wikipedia’s page about telehealth and added a new section about what abortioncare looks like and how laws have changed in our new health landscape. They also updated the medical abortion page to include informaton about telehealth access.

Why does this matter?

Globally, medical information on Wikipedia earned a staggering 4.8 billion page views in 2013.¹  In 2014, Wikipedia was found to be a more popular source of health content than the NIH, WebMD, Mayo Clinic, and others.² And not only do patients use Wikipedia, so do doctors.³

So now, as the world goes to Wikipedia to stay up-to-date about the global pandemic, readers are inevitably turning to the more than 155,000 health-related Wikipedia pages to make decisions about their healthcare in uncertain times. Wikipedia, perhaps now more than ever, is important to keep verifiable, representative, and complete.

As the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health urges women to make their health a priority during women’s health week, we’d like to commend the physicians, professors, researchers, and other family planning experts and advocates who can dedicate time to making health information more available to the public.

Who’s doing this work?

We often hear from SFP Wiki Scholars that our course to learn how to improve Wikipedia felt like a natural fit for their personal and professional goals. Patients are already relying on Wikipedia as a supplemental resource and they remark that they also use it in their own lives. They tell us, Wikipedia has the power to:

• Simplify contraception,
• Provide the public with up-to-date information on family planning (especially as realities change so quickly with shelter-in-place orders),
• Connect healthcare providers with their community using language their community uses,
• Help researchers become better communicators of their expertise using “layman’s” terms.

Through Wikipedia, practitioners can suddenly take part in healthcare conversations happening in public spheres outside the hospital or clinic. “Why make more of our own closed information systems when people already use Dr. Wikipedia?” one Wiki Scholar pointed out. The importance of non-technical, easy-to-understand information cannot be overstated.

So far, SFP has sponsored three courses, training 64 scholars to do this work. These scholars have added almost 60,000 words to high-impact Wikipedia pages about abortion and contraception, reaching 11 million readers. The latest cohort has continued to add well-researched information to a variety of topics, including about the insertion of intrauterine devices (950 daily pageviews) and the procedure of an anomaly scan in pregnancy (750 daily pageviews). One person added an image of a contraceptive diaphragm to the corresponding page, which receives about 250 pageviews every day.

How to get involved

SFP’s Executive Director Dr. Amanda Dennis was already searching for a way to bring more information to Wikipedia when she attended a conference presentation by our Director of Partnerships Jami Mathewson at the American Sociological Society’s 2018 conference. From there, a flourishing partnership between our organizations was born. As conferences and working environments go virtual, fostering these kinds of connections is more important than ever.

If your institution or organization is passionate about equipping the public with information about a particular topic, get in touch. We can help expand your reach through Wikipedia. Jami works personally with organizations to set up Wikipedia training courses that align with their mission. Our partners recognize the value of giving experts the dedicated time and support to do public engagement work, which is why many of them sponsor seats for their members or staff in our courses. To discuss partnering with Wiki Education, contact Jami at jami@wikiedu.org or visit partner.wikiedu.org for more information.

Thumbnail/header icon by Timofey Rostilov from the Noun Project.

Thus, the volunteers who curate Wikipedia’s content take the quality of medical articles very seriously. But keeping content accurate, complete, and up-to-date is a never-ending task with lots of work still to be done. Maybe it’s updating an outdated citation with the latest research. Or correcting a subtle misleading detail in the definition of a medical concept. Unfortunately, there are a limited number of Wikipedians available to update medical content and meet the high standards created by Wikipedia’s medical community. That’s why inviting more medical experts to participate can be so worthwhile.

Involving more subject-matter experts is not only beneficial for Wikipedia’s content, readers, and existing contributors. It’s a great experience for the medical professionals themselves. Just ask OB-GYNs Dr. Jennefer Russo and Colleen Denny, MD. In 2019, the Society of Family Planning (SFP) sponsored 2 courses to train their members how to add medical content to Wikipedia’s family planning-related articles. Jen, Colleen, and 30 other medical professionals, spent 3 months working closely with Wiki Education’s team to learn how Wikipedia works and improve pages related to their interests. We’re delighted that we will be running two more SFP Wiki Scholars courses in 2020, continuing this effort to bring high quality, rigorously scientific family planning information to the public. Earlier this week, Dr. Jennefer Russo, Dr. Denny, and I joined SFP’s Director of Grantmaking and Evaluation, Dr. Jenny O’Donnell, for a webinar to encourage others to join SFP’s upcoming Wiki Scholars courses.

Why Wikipedia?

“When I saw this being offered, I thought it was really exciting,” Colleen Denny, MD shared as part of the panel discussion. “As a layperson and even a doctor, I use Wikipedia all the time. It’s not only incredibly powerful, but also one of the few news sources in the United States today that is actually viewed neutrally. I’m a practicing clinician and do a lot of patient counseling, but in terms of sheer impact of getting medical information to my patients, it’s hard to beat Wikipedia. The impact is just so huge.”

When partnerships help both organizations fulfill their missions

SFP and Wiki Education saw an opportunity to partner because of a shared mission to give the public access to scientific research. As Dr. O’Donnell said in the webinar, “Though oftentimes our subject matter feels deeply political by its mere existence, the SFP sweet spot with Wiki Education is just putting the science forward.”

Wiki Education aims to reach more readers with the best, most accurate, up-to-date scientific research. Wikipedia is an excellent medium for science communication because it encourages contributors to distill complex topics into a digestible format. And we know people are looking for medical information about family planning. As the topics pop up in the news, readers flock to the Wikipedia articles to learn more.

Thanks to this partnership, we have supported 32 SFP members through 2 courses in 2019. They added 40,000 words, 390 new references, and that content has received over 2 million page views already. They have improved topics like tubal ligation, self-induced abortion, reproductive coercion, late termination of pregnancy, mifepristone, unintedned pregnancy, doula, family planning in Uganda, vaginal bleeding, medical abortion, miscarriage, reproductive rights, compulsory sterilization, and more. Now, SFP members have two additional opportunities in 2020 to join this initiative.

What participation means for subject matter experts and for Wikipedia

Members of the Wikipedia community not only want to involve more subject matter experts in the open knowledge movement, it’s also a priority for many to help correct the gender disparity in editors and invite more women and non-binary identifying folks to lend their perspectives and expertise.

The scientists we work with feel a personal responsibility to get science out to the masses, and they can be a part of diversifying knowledge production on Wikipedia. In this week’s webinar panel, Dr. Jennefer Russo noted that as scientists and health professionals, “it’s part of our responsibility to balance out the voices at the table.”

What’s it like in the training course?

So why not just learn about Wikipedia’s mechanisms on your own? Through nearly 10 years of training new editors and creating resources for people to feel comfortable entering our community, we’ve found it helps to have other people learning right there with you.

“Maybe it’s generational, but for me and others in the course, the idea of editing an online resource that so many people look at and that seems static was intimidating,” Dr. Jennefer Russo shared. “Going in and changing information and feeling like we wouldn’t get in trouble was a mental hurdle that we overcame.”

“In the beginning it was hard to figure out what to start with,” Colleen agreed. “Should I write a whole new page? Or fix an existing one? Something I learned through this seminar course that I wouldn’t have known is that there are all these people curating Wikipedia, looking for and identifying articles that need to be fixed. Like WikiProject Women’s Health. Finding that kind of toe-hold is a good way to start.”

Ultimately, the live group discussions led by Scholars & Scientists Program Manager Ryan McGrady and Wikipedia Experts Ian Ramjohn and Elysia Webb during the course provided a space for SFP members to get comfortable with the culture of Wikipedia edits, as well as the mechanisms for making them. Now Colleen says she’s comfortable continuing to correct small things here and there as she sees them.

Colleen also touched on what surprised her most through the process of learning Wikipedia’s ins and outs, “At first I wondered, if someone else can switch my edits back to the misinformation that was there before, what’s the point? But I’ve been really surprised by how much the Wikipedia community protects accurate content. I really felt like if I’m putting good content out there, even if others in the community aren’t experts, they’ll protect what is well cited and well written.”

It was clear from our discussion that Colleen Denny, MD and Dr. Jennefer Russo feel a sense of deep mutual respect with other Wikipedians. They touched on the sense of responsibility they feel not only to share their research expertise outside the walls of academia, but also the responsibility they feel to the Wikipedia community to operate within the agreed-upon systems of content creation. Joining the Wikipedia community meets their goals of reaching more patients and freeing up more scientific knowledge for the masses. And their involvement in the community meets Wikipedia’s goals of making more information free, and providing accurate info. That symbiosis is the kind of balance we’re so happy to have found in our partnership with SFP.

Want to get involved?

If you’re a member of the Society of Family Planning, you can apply to participate in the next Wiki Scholars course. They are sponsoring this opportunity so that members need only donate their time to participate. Selected Wiki Scholars will meet weekly on Mondays from 11:00am–12:00pm Pacific/2:00–3:00pm Eastern from March 3, 2020 – May 18, 2020. Applications close next Monday, February 3rd.

Learn more about our partnership with the Society of Family Planning by reading our blog posts. For inquiries about partnering with Wiki Education, contact Director of Partnerships Jami Mathewson at jami@wikiedu.org or visit partner.wikiedu.org.

“It feels really powerful to have a forum to reach this many people and to provide them with potentially helpful information. I certainly don’t reach this many people during direct patient care or through publications in medical journals.”

Everyone uses Wikipedia. Even our doctors.¹

So doesn’t it make sense to invite medical professionals into the Wikipedia community to help create and update that information?

That’s exactly what our Wikipedia training course in partnership with the Society of Family Planning (SFP) has accomplished.

One participant, an OB/GYN, tackled the Wikipedia page about doulas. She not only brought her professional expertise to improve the page, she also approached it as a consumer of that information. The SFP scholar was pregnant while she made her edits!

“The page combined my personal experience as a pregnant person who was planning to have a doula at birth, professional experience as an obstetrician-gynecologist who participates in childbirth and abortions on a regular basis, and a researcher who studies humanistic approaches to reproductive healthcare provision,” she shared with Wiki Education in an interview.

The open encyclopedia is only as accurate and complete as those who choose to engage in its curation and creation. And we all have interests and expertise that make us uniquely qualified to tackle certain topics. The more perspectives and angles of expertise represented on the encyclopedia, the better that information reflects the lives, experiences, and interests of the people searching for it.

Not only does improving Wikipedia do a great service for the world, but it can be a valuable personal experience as well. We’ve heard from participating scholars that the process of learning how to ‘edit’ is a great chance to revisit their own research and see it in a different light. Then there’s just the delightful experience of going down the rabbithole of academic discovery again.

“I noticed that the Wikipedia page needed some restructuring to be more inclusive of non-birth doulas and to have stronger references,” the SFP scholar said of her Wikipedia work. “In this process, I found scholarly writings that I had not been aware of before, and read many of them with great interest, since it was not only relevant professionally but also personally. Revising this page also motivated me to stop procrastinating and to work on my research on birth and abortion experiences. The literature review I did for the doula page had a lot of overlap with what I was already working on.”

While this OB/GYN typically focuses on primary research articles in her professional work, Wikipedia’s preference for secondary sources required that she do more of a broad review that included scholarly books. While perusing these relevant books on her Kindle, she noticed something.

“My Kindle linked to the Wikipedia entry ‘doula’ that I was in the process of editing! Immediately, I recognized the impact that Wikipedia has and felt the pressure to do a good job.”

We might all agree that everyone having access to accurate and complete information before making health decisions is important. But this sort of public engagement can be a daunting task, one that requires constant re-evaluation, expansion, and updating. Luckily, equipping the public with knowledge of science and medical research is a mission that can be done collectively and collaboratively.

“Needless to say, the current version of the doula page still has work that needs to be done,” the SFP scholar noted. “I’m hoping someone knowledgeable about end-of-life doulas will contribute, too. Since completion of the course, I have told many people, including my doula team, to check it out and get involved.”

So many medical professionals, academics, and experts in general have knowledge that would be a great fit for Wikipedia’s content. But many don’t have the time or technical know-how to get that information into the hands of the public where they’re looking for it. That’s where a course like this comes in handy. SFP sponsored seats for their members because they recognized the value of giving experts the dedicated time and support to do public engagement work. Ultimately, these scholars are making the world a better place by translating the latest research for a non-expert audience and making that information free.

“As medical professionals, we have acquired expertise over many years of rigorous training but have few outlets to share what we know with a large audience. Certainly our daily interactions with patients matter, yet Wikipedia creates an opportunity to disseminate what we know to many more people, and have far-reaching impact.”

The doula page receives more than 1,000 views every day. The SFP scholar rewrote the introduction, added multiple sections, and restructured existing content. Previously, the page only referenced doulas in relation to childbirth. Now the new paragraphs reflect that doulas are involved in other capacities, as well, including with miscarriage, abortion, and end-of-life care.

“It feels really powerful to have a forum to reach this many people and to provide them with potentially helpful information. I certainly don’t reach this many people during direct patient care or through publications in medical journals. Ultimately, I hope that it entices readers to consider having a doula support them (or their loved ones) in their major life transitions, or at minimum, helps readers see that these life transitions do not have to be experienced alone without support.”

This project is sponsored by the Society of Family Planning (SFP) with the hard work of Amanda Dennis, Jenny O’Donnell, and other staff members. SFP has sponsored 32 seats since June 2019. Participation for accepted SFP members is free. If you’re interested in buying out a customized professional development course for members or staff of your organization or institution, contact Director of Partnerships Jami Mathewson at jami@wikiedu.org.

Thumbnail image icons by Delwar Hossain and Adrien Coquet, via the Noun Project.

What would the world look like if everyone had unfettered access to knowledge? Free knowledge resources like Wikipedia provide an opportunity to put power into the hands of everyone. The Society of Family Planning (SFP) agrees, so they’ve sponsored Wikipedia training courses for their members to help improve the quality of abortion and contraception content on Wikipedia. Two cohorts of these in-depth trainings have now taken place (each spanning 12 weeks) and participating scholars have had great success bringing their expertise and professional experience into Wikipedia.

The training course

Wiki Education’s staff of Wikipedia experts facilitated online group sessions for participating SFP members, providing them with a space to ask questions, collaborate with each other, and receive hands-on support and technical training. Participants are now equipped with the Wikipedia know-how to contribute high-quality content to some of the site’s most-read pages about family planning.

Beyond the course

Director of Partnerships Jami Mathewson and Customer Success Manager Samantha Weald were thrilled to join many of these participating members, as well as SFP staff, at SFP’s annual meeting in October. Jami joined course participants Colleen Denny, Bhavik Kumar, Anne Davis, and Grace Ferguson on a panel about public scholarship through Wikipedia. The group responded to curious and enthusiastic attendees with overwhelmingly positive remarks about their experience in our course and the fulfillment they felt successfully adding to Wikipedia. The passion these scholars have for providing the public with up-to-date, accurate medical information was evident. Gaining knowledge and tools to more successfully contribute to Wikipedia is a great outcome of this course.

Successes

Among the many successes of this course, a few stand out.

Doulas play an important support role in many people’s health-related experiences, and the Wikipedia page about these professionals receives more than 1,000 views every day. The page was substantially expanded and improved by an SFP scholar, who rewrote the introduction and added multiple sections, including ones about training and certification. Previously, the page only referenced doulas in relation to childbirth. Now the new summary paragraphs reflect that doulas are involved in other capacities, as well, including with miscarriage, abortion, and end-of-life care. The SFP scholar is now responsible for more than half of the current entry.

The page for vaginal bleeding saw impressive growth, with a scholar adding more than 2,500 words. They are responsible for half of this page, which is considered of “top importance” among Wikipedia pages related to women’s health. The section on vaginal bleeding in premenopausal women is dramatically expanded, with detailed and specific information conditions that can cause vaginal bleeding. 200 people consult this page every day.

The osmotic dilators page was a short stub with some outdated citations before an SFP scholar updated it and more than doubled its content. And because they have access to the tool in their professional work, the scholar even took some photos and uploaded them, as the page previously lacked any illustrations.

Tubal ligation, the surgical procedure commonly known as having one’s “tubes tied,” is one of the most popular forms of contraception. The page on tubal ligation receives more than 550 pageviews every day. It was significantly expanded and improved by a course participant, who is now responsible for 89% of the page. That participant shared why she thinks medical professionals should be involved in Wikipedia editing in one of our previous blog posts.

Menstrual suppression is the use of hormonal management to stop or reduce menstrual bleeding. Surprisingly, Wikipedia did not have a page about this topic before an SFP scholar created it.

The page about medical abortion (or medication abortion) describes the use of pills to bring about an abortion. It is another high-impact Wikipedia page, with 450 people checking it each day. A health professional in one of the SFP courses made a wide range of improvements, including reworking the introduction, expanding content, adding references, and replacing references with up-to-date research.

Another scholar improved the page on reproductive rights, with a focus on expanding the human rights section.

Given that most people who add content to the English Wikipedia live in the Global North, content about other countries is either underdeveloped or is told from an outsider’s perspective. One SFP scholar from Uganda went about telling the story of family planning in Uganda in their own words. Read more in our blog post.

The unintended pregnancy page has also been improved. The scholar who tackled it refined the definition, improved statistical information, added up-to-date references, and contributed content about other factors associated with unintended pregnancy.

An abortion fund is a non-profit that provides assistance to low-income women who cannot afford the costs of an abortion. The abortion fund page was expanded, many parts rewritten, and many sources added or replaced by an SFP scholar.

Other scholars fixed errors, updated statistics, expanded sections, or improved citations in the pages on emergency contraception, reproductive coercion, dilation and evacuation, late termination of pregnancy, mifepristone, and the main abortion page.

This project is sponsored by the Society of Family Planning (SFP) with the hard work of Amanda Dennis, Jenny O’Donnell, and other staff members. SFP has sponsored 32 seats since June 2019. Participation for accepted SFP members is free. If you’re interested in buying out a customized professional development course for members or staff of your organization or institution, contact Director of Partnerships Jami Mathewson at jami@wikiedu.org.

With our partnership with the Society of Family Planning (SFP), we taught around two dozen public and women’s health experts how to edit Wikipedia, empowering them to apply their expertise towards improving Wikipedia’s coverage of family planning and maternal health. With our training and resources, one such health expert, a PhD candidate, chose to devote their time to improving articles related to Uganda, where they are from.

Over the 12-week course, they improved two articles related to family planning and maternal health in Uganda: Abortion in Uganda and Maternal health in Uganda. Their editing overlapped significantly with their scholarly research interests, which are maternal and child health. While they were pleased that articles specific to Uganda existed, they were disappointed in the low quality of those articles, expressing a belief that “not many contributions to the articles [they] edited seemed to be made by Ugandans”.

“I think specialist content on topics like family planning in Uganda is limited,” this health professional shared in an interview with Wiki Education, “yet it is common from my experience that people usually rely on Wikipedia information for initial Google searches for any topic.”

The PhD candidate’s role as a public health expert from Uganda meant they were uniquely positioned to improve this content. The article for Abortion in Uganda saw the addition of a new section about the health and economic consequences of unsafe abortions. Additionally, ten-year-old statistics about maternal deaths from unsafe abortions were updated to more recent figures. Maternal health in Uganda was improved by the addition of six references, enhancing the verifiability of the content. The statistics for maternal mortality ratio were also updated.

“The Wikipedia writing and editing process was completely new to me. Even with prior edits that I attempted to make before the SFP course, I learned that it is more complex that I initially thought.”

Although learning how to add to Wikipedia was an unfamiliar experience, it was one that this health professional found enlightening. “Prior to this training I was not so ‘open minded’ toward Wikipedia especially because being a physician, we rarely refer to Wikipedia for any reference.” Ultimately, though, they now believe that public health specialists should engage with Wikipedia because people rely on it for their initial information needs.

By contributing their voice and expertise, this scholar helped Wikipedia become more accurate and representative. Ugandans now have the opportunity to access information on English Wikipedia about their country by a fellow citizen, and we are honored to facilitate that connection!

Thumbnail image in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Enter an OB/GYN and Wiki Education-trained Wiki Scientist, supported through our partnership with the Society of Family Planning: Colleen Denny, MD. Colleen is a Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. When asked why she took the time to learn how to edit Wikipedia, she said “Wikipedia is such a common first source of information on the internet. It’s remarkable how widespread and accepted it is as a reliable source (or at least a place to start) for just about everything. Our patients are using it for their health questions, so the more health professionals we have editing, the better and safer information they get.”

Colleen saw that Wikipedia’s article for tubal ligation just wasn’t up to scratch. In addition to having poor medical references such as advice columns, several paragraphs lacked citations of any kind. And with an article that’s viewed more than five hundred times every day, she knew that the public needed a better and more reliable article. Not only that, though, but it’s a medical procedure that she performs on a weekly basis. As a medical doctor, her training and education helped her quickly see parts of the article that were inaccurate or outdated. As a participant in our 12-week course for professionals, she was equipped with the tools to fix the errors and inaccuracies she saw.

With Colleen’s recent edits, the article is now nearly twice the size as it was in June 2019. Instead of twenty-two sources, some of which were unreliable, the article is now referenced with forty high-quality sources that meet Wikipedia policies for medical articles. Instead of having “advantages and disadvantages” lumped together at the bottom of the article, Colleen created an easy-to-follow article structure, with detailed sections and subsections for the many benefits of tubal ligations, as well as its risks and complications.

This experience resonated with Colleen as she realized her ability to quickly make expansive impacts: “In academic medicine, we spend a lot of time focused on writing articles and submitting papers to formal journals, and we spend a lot of time educating patients. And that all is a slow process and takes a lot of time and effort. But contributing to Wikipedia gives you a huge audience, all of whom are interested in your topic and have sought it out, almost immediately. There’s almost nothing else I could do or write that would get 500 page views every day, and it happens as soon as I hit ‘Publish’. Such a huge, immediate impact.”

Through updating old content, removing bad references, and covering new topics with detail, Colleen is now responsible for nearly 90% of the article for tubal ligation. When you click through the content, it’s her words you’re reading: a physician, a women’s health expert, and now, a Wikipedian.

If your institution is interested in sponsoring a Wiki Scientists course for its staff or members, send an inquiry to contact@wikiedu.org for more information about pricing and curriculum customization.

For more information about our partnership with SFP, read our blog post here.

Feature image by VideoPlasty, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.