Contributing to world's largest encylopedia: my experiences as a Wikipedia science communicator

Every month, millions of people read about climate change on Wikipedia. However, the information is often outdated and written by non-experts with strong opinions, such as climate activists and climate contrarians. Based on my six years of experience of writing on Wikipedia, I’ve come to the conclusion Wikipedia that is an undervalued piece of the science communication landscape.

Wikipedia as a medium enjoys high levels of trust compared to traditional news media, at least in the UK. It is built by a game of consensus building and negotiation between people with differing views. I will distill the experiences I have had on effective collaboration with non-experts who expose complexity in my explanations, dealing with those in denial of climate change and more recent examples of the presence of climate activism.

For me editing has also been useful for my research, and I believe the same will be true for other experts,. As writing for Wikipedia is very similar to carrying out a literature review, it is especially worthwhile for early career scientists or others venturing into new topic. It has often helped me to better put my own research into context. Rewording scientific literature for a broad public allows for a better appreciation of the material as well. A further validation can be obtained by submitting your Wikipedia article as a scientific paper to various WikiJournals.