Wikipedia is one of the top six most visited websites with over 500 million unique visitors per month. It contains over 35 million articles across 288 languages, with the largest being English. The site relies on volunteer contributors to write and edit articles according to core policies of neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research. While most editing improves Wikipedia, conflicts of interest can undermine its goal of producing a neutral encyclopedia and are strongly discouraged.

1. How to improve Wikipedia
without getting the Internet mad at you
John P. Sadowski, James Hare
DoD Social Media Meeting, June 18, 2015

2. Did you know?
• Wikipedia gets 20 billion page requests from 500 million
unique visitors per month, which represents 7% of the
world population!
• Wikipedia is one of the top-six visited web sites!

3. What is Wikipedia?
• Content?
– Over 35 million articles (almost 5 million in English)
– 288 language editions, the largest being English,
Swedish, German, Dutch, French, and Waray-Waray
– On the Wikimedia Commons, over 26 million media
files, mostly images
• How many contributors?
– ~1.4 million have contributed at least 10 edits to the
English Wikipedia
– ~32,000 active contributors (at least 5 edits in the last
month) on the English Wikipedia, ~73,000 in all
languages

4. How Does it Work?
Everything on Wikipedia has
been written by people like
you.
http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/

5. The Collaborative Community
• How do volunteers contribute?
o Writing articles
o Editing existing articles
o Copyediting
o Formatting & “Wikifying”
o Adding references
o Helping new users
o Creating and adding images
o Contributing subject matter
expertise
o Mediating disputes
o Administration

6. Public face of knowledge?
• Roy Rosenzweig, George Mason
University
“If Wikipedia is becoming the family
encyclopedia for the twenty-first century,
historians probably have a professional
obligation to make it as good as possible. And
if every member of the Organization of
American Historians devoted just one day to
improving the entries in her or his areas of
expertise, it would not only significantly raise
the quality of Wikipedia, it would also enhance

9. The five pillars
• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
• Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of
view.
• Wikipedia is free content that anyone can
edit, use, modify, and distribute.
• Editors should interact with each other in a
respectful and civil manner.
• Wikipedia does not have firm rules other than
these five general principles.

10. Core content policies
• Neutral point of view
• Verifiability must come from reliable
sources
• No original research
“The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia
is verifiability, not truth—whether readers
can check that material in Wikipedia has
already been published by a reliable source,
not whether editors think it is true.”

11. Neutral Point of View
• “Editors must write articles from a neutral
point of view, representing all significant
views fairly, proportionately, and without
bias.”
• Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPOV

12. Everything must be verifiable
• All quotations and any material challenged
or likely to be challenged must be
attributed to a reliable, published source
using an inline citation.
• Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:V

13. Must use reliable sources
• “Wikipedia articles should be based on
reliable, published sources, making sure
that all majority and significant minority
views that have appeared in reliable,
published sources are covered”
• Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RS

14. Notability: Is this article right for Wikipedia?
Articles require:
o significant coverage
o in reliable sources
o that are independent of the subject

15. No original research
• Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material
in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published
source. Articles may not contain any new analysis or
synthesis of published material that serves to advance a
position not clearly advanced by the sources.
• Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OR

16. Some other rules
• Be bold! WP:BOLD
• Bold, revert, discuss WP:BRD
• Assume good faith WP:AGF
• Be civil WP:CIVIL
• No conflict of interest WP:COI

17. Discussion pages & Talk pages (Activity)
Signing a message: use four tildes (~~~~)

18. Additional opportunities for feedback
• Article ratings – articles may be rated according to the
Wikipedia 1.0 scale: Stub, Start, C, B, GA, A, FA
• Peer review/Quality articles – Editors can request a review
from other editors.
• WikiProject discussion pages
• Ask around! Classmates, parents, friends, lovers, other
editors... there are many opportunities to get help and
feedback on your work.

19. Conflict of interest editing
• “A Wikipedia conflict of interest (COI) is an
incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is
to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia,
and the aims of an individual editor.”
• “COI editing is strongly discouraged. It risks causing
public embarrassment to the individuals and groups
being promoted, and if it causes disruption to the
encyclopedia, accounts may be blocked.”
• “Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from
direct article editing, and should instead propose
changes on the talk page of the article in question.”

20. Conflict of interest editing
Best practices (see WP:BPCOI):
• Learn Wikipedia's rules before you break them.
• Be up-front about your associations with the
subject.
• Avoid creating new articles about yourself or
your organization.
• Avoid making controversial edits to articles
related to your associations.
• Don't push people to change their minds about
issues relating to your associations.
• Ask for help appropriately.

21. Some examples
• 2006 and 2014 Congressional editing
controversies
• Newt Gingrich presidential campaign
• SOPA blackout

23. Acknowledgements
• Includes slides from:
– Wikimedia Foundation
– Alex Stinson (User:Sadads)
– Baruch Stone (User:Basket of Puppies)
– Mike Cline (User:Mike Cline)