Presentation at the ACS National Conference in Boston in August 2015. Covers chemistry WikiProjects in Wikipedia, and collaborations with other chemistry organizations

1. CHEMISTRY COLLABORATIONS
ON WIKIPEDIA

2. OVERVIEW
o Introduction
o WikiProjects within Wikipedia
o Working with ChemSpider
o CAS and CommonChemistry
o IUPAC definitions within Wikipedia
o Further collaborations
o Getting collaborations to work
o Conclusion

3. WIKIS ARE ALL ABOUT COLLABORATION
Making the user
the editor makes
all the difference!
Traditional
website – run by
one or two main
people
Wiki – a
collaboration
of many people
Picture by Ragnam1211, CC-BY-SA 3.0

4. WIKIPEDIA
Wikipedia defines itself as:
"a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual
encyclopedia project supported by the non-
profit Wikimedia Foundation.“
(my emphasis)
© Wikimedia Foundation

5. WIKIPROJECTS: COLLABORATING
WITHIN WIKIPEDIA

6. WIKIPROJECT CHEMISTRY

7. COVERS GENERAL CHEMISTRY
CONTENT
Reactions & processes, chemistry concepts, equipment,
chemists’ biographies, history, etc.

8. WIKIPROJECT CHEMICALS
Collaborates on writing quality articles
and standards on chemical substances:
developing data boxes for articles
chemical naming, structure drawing
article assessment
Data validation on chemical properties
Collaborated with ChemSpider, CAS, etc.

9. WIKIPROJECT ELEMENTS
Focused on the chemical elements, periodic
table, etc.
Other WikiProjects deal with
 Pharmacology
 Molecular & Cellular Biology

10. WHAT CAN WIKIPROJECTS DO?
A WikiProject puts a “face” on the
consensus view within the community
o Set policies and standards for certain
types of articles
o Resolve problems that arise
o Discuss and organize content
o Track content quality and coverage, and
work together to fix gaps or weaknesses
o Collaborate with other groups within or
outside Wikipedia

11. COLLABORATION WITH
CHEMSPIDER
o After Antony Williams at ChemSpider
began curating Wikipedia content in
December 2007 , the Chemicals
WikiProject began a formal
collaboration.
o This allowed cross-checks to be made
between ChemSpider and Wikipedia
content
o This, and contact with Peter Murray-
Rust, led to a redesign of the ChemBox
to make it more machine-friendly
o Informal contact continues today

12. COLLABORATION WITH CAS
In 2008, spurred on by the curation effort
started by Antony Williams, WP:Chemicals
began to try a formal, systematic validation
of ChemBox content, beginning with CAS
Registry numbers.
Initially things didn’t go well…

13. COLLABORATION WITH CAS
…but it had a happy ending! CAS
agreed to share a file containing
details on 8000 common chemicals.
This allowed WP:Chemicals to validate
immediately CAS numbers on around
3000 of the most common substances
This collection was also posted by CAS
for free public access as CAS Common
Chemicals – allowing Wikipedia users
to click through to a validated CAS No.
in the ChemBox. CheMoBot checks if
the number is correct.

14. WIKIDATA – TAKING VALIDATION
TO THE NEXT LEVEL
Wikidata is a sister project of Wikipedia that aims to collate data that rarely or
never change, and put them into a database that can be shared across all
Wikimedia Foundation projects. Not yet used on the English Wikipedia.
PubChem has already begun to share data with the Wikidata chemists, and it
appears that EBI and others are also collaborating.

15. IUPAC DEFINITIONS
IUPAC has informally collaborated with the Wikipedia community since 2008,
mainly to ensure correct IUPAC definitions are available. A more formal
collaboration has been under way with the IUPAC Polymers Committee since
2012.

16. FURTHER
COLLABORATIONS
WP:Chemicals, through the work of Dr. Dirk Beetstra,
was able to extend the validation to other fields, by
working with other organizations such as the European
Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) and KEGG. These fields
are patrolled by a bot that watches for any changes to
validated ChemBox fields.
Other informal collaborations have helped in other
ways, e.g., Bob Hanson (St. Olaf’s College) worked with
Dirk Beetstra to provide 3D images for all Chemboxes.

17. GETTING COLLABORATIONS TO
WORK
o Work with the Wikipedia Community; WikiProjects are a
good place to start
o To work, the collaboration must add value to Wikipedia,
not just your own project. Remember that Wikipedia is an
encyclopedia, not a PR agency!
o Build trust! Show respect to Wikipedians – they may not
take kindly to you deleting their content! But be aware
that sometimes an over-zealous editor may revert your edit
by mistake.
o Follow the Wikipedia style guide and copyright
regulations carefully, or you will alienate the community
quite quickly!
From Howard Pyle’s
“Kiss of Peace” Public domain

18. CONCLUSION
Collaboration has made Wikipedia a richer and
more reliable source for chemical information
At the same time, Wikipedia has provided a
useful platform for the chemistry community
to reach the working chemist and the “man
on the Clapham omnibus”.
It is likely that Wikidata will become the focus
for further collaborations and validation work
Youngsters looking at “Albert Einstein” on
Wikipedia. Picture by Ziko-C, CC-BY-SA 3.0

19. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Physchim62, Wimvandorst, Rifleman82,
DMacks, Edgar181, Beetstra, Cacycle, Stone, ~K,
ChemSpiderMan/ChemConnector and Smokefoot
for their tireless contributions to Wikipedia
chemistry articles and validation.
Thanks to our many collaborators outside
Wikipedia including Antony Williams, David Sharpe
(RSC/ChemSpider), Janice Mears (CAS), Michael
Hess & Annie Rumble (IUPAC Polymers), Evan
Bolton (PubChem), Bob Hanson (St. Olaf’s College)
and many others.
Wim Van Dorst,
a Dutch member
of WP:Chem
since March
2005.

20. COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
All of my own content in this presentation is released under a
Creative Commons BY-SA-3.0 license
Copyright information for images is usually attributed on the
slide itself
Content from Wikipedia is reused via a Creative Commons BY-
SA-3.0 license. For authors, please visit the original Wikipedia
page and select the “history” tab.
Other pictures not attributed (e.g., Wikipedians at Wikimania)
should only be my own personal pictures, also CC-BY-SA3.

21. ANY QUESTIONS? Thank you for your attention