Wikimedia: a toolbox for the democratization of the scientific knowledge associated with vector ecology. A view from the Global South

GIGLIO, MATÍAS; ARCHUBY, FERNANDO M; BÉGUELIN, MARIEN; LORENTE, MALENA; PLOS, ANABELA; VERÓN, CONSTANZA; ZUBIMENDI, MIGUEL ANGEL

Congreso; 2do Congreso de la Sociedad Latinoamericana de Ecología de Vectores; 2022

Wikipedia, the free, multilingual, online encyclopedia, is currently the most consulted source of knowledge in human history. It belongs to a movement for free information and has the goal of making knowledge created by humankind available. Wikipedia is part of a bigger project called Wikimedia, which includes a multimedia repository (Wikimedia Commons), and a database that links the different projects (Wikidata), along with other less known initiatives. A characteristic of Wikimedia is that it can only include previously published knowledge (it cannot be a primary source) and its content is created and improved constantly and collaboratively by thousands of volunteers. Virtually any person can edit it if they follow some simple editorial rules. Even so there is a huge gap and some significant biases in the contents of Wikipedia, and several extensive fields are underrepresented. From the Equipo de Wikimedistas del Museo de La Plata [Wikimedians’ Team of the La Plata Museum] (Argentina) – an interdisciplinary group of students, scientists, and professionals from different fields – we address this lack of knowledge training new users, spreading information about Wikimedia, and organizing campaigns of Wikipedia edition (“editathons”) in Spanish that are focused on specific topics with a regional perspective. Nowadays the impact of disclosure in Wikipedia surpasses even the wildest imagination. Every month this encyclopedia is consulted over 2 billion times, and if we only consider articles edited by members of our team from May 2020 to date, they have reached over 150.000.000 views. Here we show the result of our latest editathon which focused on “Biological Vectors”. The first step when organizing this editathon was to improve the article Vector biológico [Biological vector], which was confusing and incomplete, and which ended up being combined with the article Vector epidemiológico [Epidemiological vector]. We organized the edition into three main topics: (1) Vectors that affect humans, (2) Vectors of veterinary importance, and (3) Vectors with phytosanitary importance. The editathon had 18 participants, 7 of whom were entirely new users. During the event a total of 104 pieces of content were either improved or created on Wikimedia. We identified 89 taxa that are known biological vectors with a specific tag that allows an easy search of vector organisms within Wikipedia. We created or improved 58 articles related to vector taxa and vector-borne diseases on Wikipedia, and uploaded 6 new figures of vector organisms on Wikimedia Commons. We created or improved a total of 40 entries on Wikidata. Finally, we greatly improved the existing article about Chagas’ disease. This activity has made valuable information accessible to the community regarding biological vectors and the diseases they transmit.