Wikipedia wants more contributions from academics

The Guardian:

Mike Peel began editing Wikipedia – the free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit – after a physics entry made him mad. It was 2005 and the then undergraduate was reading around a course when he became “irritated by a grammatical mistake”. He hasn’t looked back since. For Peel, now a 26-year-old post-doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester, Jodrell Bank centre for astrophysics, is not only the secretary of Wikimedia UK – the local volunteer chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees the Wikipedia project – but also one of the more prolific contributors among UK academics.

Though it is impossible to say who holds the top spot – academic wikipedians are not ranked per se – Peel estimates he has made more than 16,000 edits, contributed to approximately 1,500 pages and started over 50, mostly within his area of expertise. If you Google “Big Bang”, the Wikipedia page that is the first result to pop up owes its thoroughness, at least in part, to the work of Peel. His main reason for contributing is one of public good. “Everyone goes to Wikipedia, and, because most people are using it and learning from it, we need to make sure they get the right information,” he says.

Read the whole story: The Guardian