Wiki Musings

Two weeks ago we had our first RUTTER/CIUHCT Wikipedia edit-a-thon at the Faculty of Sciences, with colleagues from several projects and sub-disciplines joining to edit specific articles on History of Science, mostly dealing with navigation, but also calendars and globes. We contributed contents to the English, German, Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedias, and even to correct a related blip on Wikidata. We had time to discuss not only the practicalities, dos and don’ts of editing the Wikis, but also interesting conversations about the general principles and intent of the Wikimedia movement, and its relations to academia.

Incidentally, the following day was the first of the annual Portuguese Wikimedia convention, this year with the explicit aim of “bringing the Wikimedia closer to the academic, scientific and cultural domains.” The contagious and energetic enthusiasm of this small community made me reflect further on how and why these two worlds, that of the academic institutions and that of free and open knowledge communities may or should intersect and interact.

On a practical level, it might seem obvious that the Wiki world has a technical know-how that can help the diffusion of a contents held by academia—but in practice there is much overlap here, and this instrumental relation is far from clear cut.

More essentially, what these worlds have in common is dialogue. Dialogue does not mean a conversation between two people (that would be a duologue), but a word, or simply language (logos) that moves through (dia), that is communicated. More specifically, dialogue means discursive thought in motion, an articulated body of language that moves like a wind, anywhere it wants to go. It is in the nature of knowledge to flow, or fly, or flash around. From a human subjective point of view, the basic requirement for this is a will to share, the sheer pleasure and selfless act of sharing knowledge, of contributing to an ever-imperfect, and yet ever-perfecting body of knowledge.

Wikipedia has many shortcomings, and the academic world has many shortcomings—it cannot be otherwise, because the sum of human knowledge is imperfect. The thrill and the reward of science is in the making, in the sharing, and for that, we look forward to future sessions, and we wish success to our colleagues of both worlds. [Juan Acevedo]