User:Giantflightlessbirds/Eight Important Wikifacts

These are the notes for a half-hour presentation I gave at the National Digital Forum regional meeting at Whanganui, 5 October 2016. Participants are welcome to add notes and links to improve it.

1. Wikipedia's where our audience gets their facts

Wikipedia's either the first Google result, or it should be. If your institution doesn't have a great Wikipedia page, it's because you're not interesting enough, or you live in New Zealand.

2. Anyone can edit it

You should create an account, but you don't have to. Any anonymous person can change any page. There's no cabal of editors.

3. Vandalism is corrected quickly

Childish vandalism's discovered and corrected by robots and volunteers. Persistent, sociopathic vandalism can last longer. It's still more accurate than a printed encyclopaedia.

4. You can see the History of every edit made

Who did what, when, and why. So it's easy to revert vandalism.

5. Every article has a Talk page

You can argue about page content here.

6. There's no "Wikipedia" to complain to

You can't "write to Wikipedia" or send them a petition if you don't like what's on a page. Fix it, or discuss it with volunteer editors on the Talk page.

7. You can't edit your own page, or your employer's

There are conflict of interest rules; your work could all be undone by another editor.

8. Your institution can support Wikipedia directly and indirectly

As well as editing pages, you can make images available under a CC-BY license, and put well-referenced expert research on your website.