CAN Edit-a-thon Wiki4WorldHearingDay2025
Edit-a-thon
[edit]In many countries, it often takes years for individuals with hearing difficulties to seek care. Even when they do, following through with recommended interventions, particularly for hearing aids, remains low. This gap in ear and hearing care can be attributed to several factors, including the lack of accurate and understandable information. Additionally, people tend to resist information that is imposed on them, preferring instead to seek out what they need independently.
To promote hearing health, it is crucial to identify where people are searching for health information. Wikipedia is a widely used reference source on the internet. As part of World Hearing Day 2025, Wiki4WorldHearingDay2025 offers a platform for individuals and groups to make small yet impactful contributions in any language. The platform offers tutorials on how to improve Wikipedia content related to hearing, risk factors, hearing health services, hearing tests, and preventive or treatment interventions.
CAN members Hector de Matos and Thais Morata will host a 90-minute virtual hands-on session on January 20 at 8 AM ET for those interested in learning more. Please contact Hector (hectorgabriel@usp.br) for further details.
For additional context and history, see the article "Strategies for Crowdsourcing Hearing Health Information: A Comparative Study of Educational Programs and Volunteer-Based Campaigns on Wikimedia" in BMC Public Health.
The workshop will include practical editing examples and hands-on activities on Wikipedia and Wikidata, focusing on improving topics related to hearing and computational audiology.
Background
[edit]This workshop aims to briefly explore the use of Wikipedia and Wikidata to disseminate scientifically grounded information through an interactive Edit-a-Thon focused on hearing health and audiology-related topics.
Wikipedia and Wikidata are integral parts of the open knowledge ecosystem maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. The core mission of these projects is to ensure that the sum of all possible human knowledge is openly accessible. These content platforms are collaboratively maintained by countless volunteers who contribute by writing texts and curating data.
Wikipedia is the most-read general reference source on the internet, available in 336 languages and accessed by a global user base. Wikidata functions as an open database of structured and categorized data, readable by both humans and machines, providing tools for knowledge curation.
Wiki4WorldHearingDay is an activity involving students, researchers, audiologists, and patients worldwide. They edit Wikimedia projects to raise awareness and crowdsource knowledge about hearing health. These efforts have resulted in 18.1 million accesses to edited content related to hearing health and audiology on Wikipedia from 2022 to 2024.