Thanks — bonehead mistake. Fixed.
Wuje
Karma: 13
Very related is the finding that scientific articles being used as Wikipedia sources causally gives them an average of 91% more citations: “Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia”.
Thanks — bonehead mistake. Fixed.
Very related is the finding that scientific articles being used as Wikipedia sources causally gives them an average of 91% more citations: “Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia”.
I’m even aware of some labs that have groups of students who routinely update Wikipedia articles relevant to their research. It sounds nefarious — and some activities might be, i.e. replacing sources from other labs with your own lab’s papers — but really it isn’t super far off from what OP is describing. The role of a scientist is to create and disseminate new knowledge, and there are few venues better than Wikipedia to make new concepts accessible to broader audiences.
There is also some conception of Wikipedia as “for laymen”, which is true to some extent — I doubt number theorists often read the Number Theory article — but also misses the huge contingent of scientists who do use Wikipedia for cursory, high-level understanding of fields adjacent to their own — maybe a combinatorics researcher would read the Number Theory page for a quick overview before talking to a collaborator. I guess your Veritasium post is even a weak example of this! (Congrats on that btw :D)