Wikipedia is already the most power and existing educational tool and it is promoted as an education tool online, offline and on mobile phones also for free (through Wikipedia Zero).
The wide Wikimedia movement contributes voluntarily to Wikipedia content and in making Wikipedia more accessible. The Wikimedia movement is open and anyone can join it.
Wikipedia already works with a peer-review system; it is of course not an academic peer-review, but a constant evaluation work implemented within the community. The system works efficiently in all the fields in which the community has competences and expertise (professional or amateur).
Improve quality and encourage innovation are part of Wikimedia Movement Strategic Plan.
Wikipedia presents an over-representation of the so-called Western-based subjects and an under-representation of the subjects related to the so-called “Global South”.
Wikipedia does not respond to curriculum-based questions in all countries.
Wikipedia community is not geographically balanced and it is does not have competences and expertise (professional or amateur) in all fields.
Few Wikipedia editors contribute to African content on Wikipedia.
The majority of Wikipedia editors are in the US, Europe and Japan. Very few editors are based in Africa.
The majority of Wikipedia linguistic editions are very small and with low participation.
Offline distribution of Wikipedia does not allow to edit Wikipedia and to contribute to it; this is a major limitation for the “encyclopaedia anyone can edit”.
Primary schools still face in many countries major challenges: lack of adequate infrastructures (with of course very limited access to computers), large classes, teachers’ absenteeism and lack of schoolbooks and libraries.
Opportunities
Threats
Access to Wikipedia is rapidly growing all over the world, online and offline.
Wikipedia has the potentiality to respond to curriculum-based questions in all countries of the world.
Contributing to the quality and quantity of Wikipedia content means to contribute to anyone’s knowledge.
The new Wikimedia project Wikidata is providing a new tool to synchronise data on different Wikipedia linguistic editions.
Experience has showed that a critical mass of content triggers participation. Several linguistic editions of Wikipedia have grown rapidly thanks to mass uploads (in particular by uploading stub articles about communes using existing database); once a critical number of articles is reached a linguistic edition has more chances to establish a growing and healthy community of editors.
Providing content which responds to curriculum-based questions in many languages is specifically useful for primary education which is mainly taught in official and unofficial local languages. The incrementation of this specific content can allow smaller Wikipedia editions to be extremely useful and relevant.
The license of Wikipedia (Creative Commons attribution share-alike) allows reuse of content also for other projects, initiatives, publications.
The idea of involving more the scientific community in contributing to Wikipedia is considered by many people in movement an opportunity to increase Wikipedia quality.
The involvement of the scientific community on specific topics, which are not particularly developed by the current Wikipedia community, can fill a gap.
Wikipedia community can efficiently peer-review articles in fields in which the community has competences and expertise (professional or amateur). If there isn't jet a community in specific fields, we can fill the gap by creating another peer-review system.
An already establishing peer-review system is the one implemented by scientific journals. Scientific journals might or might not be open access and with a license compatible with Wikipedia, but they are published in different languages, they focus on different fields and they already have reviewers.
In particular in human and social sciences and in African studies, few scientific journals have an open licenses or a license compatible with Wikipedia. To contribute to Wikipedia those journals can involve their reviewers; the reviewed articles can not be published on their journals to be compatible with Wikipedia, but they can be published with a different license on another platform which cite the partnership with the journal (the Wikipedia Scientific Journal).
By involving scientific journals in contributing with their reviewing process to Wikipedia articles, we establish a practice which can go beyond ourselves and which can create awareness on the use open licenses (also compatible with Wikipedia) and on the role of the scientific community in contributing to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects.
The community of Wikipedia is made of a large web of independent clusters. To contribute to Wikipedia it is essential to respect Wikipedia pillars and to negotiate with the communities the notability and relevance of a contribution.
Individuals can “be bold” but institutions and projects produce better results when they are not. To avoid conflicts, it is important that institutions and projects conceive their contribution to Wikipedia as an offer to the community rather than a direct contribution; they can provide open content, support and networking.
For institutions and projects, the most efficient and sustainable path to contribute to Wikipedia is the indirect and longest one. It requires to implement simultaneously more activities and to involve the largest number of stakeholders and communities.
The scientific community could contribute more to Wikipedia and could play a role in assisting and supporting the community and being part of the community also in new ways.
There are three main approaches in the assessment of Wikipedia articles: 1. Articles are evaluated in a collaborative way through a questionnaire published in the articles and open to anyone. 2. Wikipedia editors can collaboratively select “quality articles” and “featured articles” which need to meet a list of requirements. 3. Researchers study Wikipedia articles and evaluated them; the results of the evaluations are published in scientific articles. More assessment tools can benefit Wikipedia quality.
Establishing a team of reviewers - which can review the articles which respond to curriculum-based questions in different languages - is extremely complicated. It would require a huge team of reviewers in many fields and with a broad range of linguistic skills. It is much easier to aggregate existing scientific journals in different languages and in different fields which already have their reviewers.
If we involve the scientific community or other people in contributing to Wikipedia in specific fields in which there isn't jet a Wikipedia community with competences and expertise (professional or amateur), and if we aim at contributing with quality articles, we can not simply upload the articles: we also need to take care of the peer-review.
