Guide to editing Wikipedia articles on Ecology

Preamble

Editing Wikipedia can be daunting for newbies, especially as a student editor contributing to Wikipedia for the first time as a class assignment. This guide is designed to assist students assigned to add content related to ecology articles on Wikipedia.

Be accurate

Wikipedia is a resource millions of people use to inform themselves about the world and their environment, to guide policy decisions, and make quick sense of (or even write) news articles. Your work for this class will be read by thousands of people, so it’s important to be accurate.

By documenting and sharing facts about or related to ecology, you will help Wikipedia present a wider spectrum of expertise about the world. With great power comes great responsibility!

Understand the guidelines

Take time to read and understand the suggestions here to maximize the value of your contributions to Wikipedia. If you post something that doesn’t meet these guidelines, resolving it may take up valuable volunteer time that could have been spent improving content.

If you aren’t comfortable working within these guidelines, talk to your instructor about an alternative off-wiki assignment.

Engage with editors

Part of the Wikipedia experience is receiving and responding to feedback from other editors. Don’t wait until the last day to make a contribution, or you may miss out on important comments, advice, and ideas. Volunteers from the Wikipedia community might read, respond or ask questions about your work. You may not get a comment, but if you do, make sure to acknowledge it. That’s a crucial part of the Wikipedia process.

Watch out for close paraphrasing

Wikipedia articles are written in your own words. Plagiarizing by copy-and-pasting or close paraphrasing — when most of the words are changed, but the structure and meaning of the original text remains — is against the rules.

For a Wikipedia assignment, plagiarism is a violation of your university’s academic honor code. Plagiarism on Wikipedia will be caught by other editors, and there will be a permanent online record of plagiarism tied to your account. Even with standard resources or authors, you cannot directly copy descriptions of social concepts, studies, or theories into Wikipedia.

The best way to avoid this hassle is to make sure you understand your material, draw from several sources, and write it in your own words.

Don’t be scared. Be bold!

Everybody on Wikipedia wants to make it the best it can be. Take the time to understand the rules, and soon you’ll be contributing important knowledge to a resource you and millions of other people use every day!

Choosing an article

Choose a topic with extensive literature in independent, peer-reviewed journals or books.
You may wish to search for interesting and plentiful sources first, then choose a Wikipedia article based on what you find.
Choose a topic that isn’t already well-developed on Wikipedia (look for what’s known as “stub” or “start-class” articles — check the talk page for an article’s rating).

Finding good candidates

You can help contribute missing articles on ecoregions:

In the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ecoregions_in_the_United_States_(EPA)
In Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WWF_ecoregions_in_Canada
Anywhere else in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ecoregions_by_country.
Ecology stub articles list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ecology_stubs

Organizing your article

Every article will be unique, but here are some proposed scaffolds for two types of articles, and general outlines of sections you would include in these articles. You can add, remove, or reorder sections as appropriate for your own topic or article improvement.

Many articles in ecology might focus on one aspect of the ecosystem, for example, “Fauna of Kenya” or “Fauna of Poland” are stub articles with a very specific and narrow focus.

You might find articles that don’t include this information, and select to add some parts or all of them. In all cases, every article will be somewhat unique. Deciding on structure is a good test of critical thinking and writing skills.

Writing about a biogeographic region

Lead section: A scaffolding paragraph that summarizes the article.
Setting: Physical area (in square miles or kilometers), neighboring regions, major features, such as soils, rivers, watersheds, or geological features or events (fires, volcanic eruptions, flooding, human development). Climate classifications, geographic features, and events that influenced the environment.
Characteristics: Typical or defining aspects of the ecosystem, such as whether it is predominantly forest, grassland, or wetland; terrestrial, aquatic, or marine; reef or estuary.
Biota: Biodiversity (or lack thereof), population dynamics and interactions. Mention the trophic level first. Then top predators, then lesser predators, prey, and herbivores.
Human use and impacts: How humans interact with the region: agriculture, fishing, mining, logging, etc.
Human use, threats and conservation: Impact of humans on the environment, such as development, deforestation, desertification, overfishing, soil degradation, etc.

Writing about a species

Lead section: A scaffolding paragraph that summarizes the article.
Description: Appearance and sound; noting variations by sex, location, etc.
Habitat: Where it lives and its relationship with that habitat, such as diet. Note historical changes, such as migrations, overpopulation or extinction.
Behavior (if applicable): Social behavior, hunting or foraging techniques, threat responses, breeding and courtship, etc.
Taxonomy: Who found and named the species and when?
Conservation Status: Endangered, extinct, etc. Note factors in status and impact of species.

Other topics to consider Biographies of ecologists or conservationists. Rachel Carson’s article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson) is a good example. Note that there are stringent rules for editing articles on living persons. You can find these by typing the shortcut “WP:BLP” into Wikipedia’s search bar.

Think critically

How do you identify sources you can use to build your Wikipedia article? Ideally your sources should be reliable, published, and generally, reviewed by a third party for accuracy.

Use reliable sources

Wikipedia calls for secondary sources, that is, sources which summarize one of more primary or secondary sources, usually to provide an overview of the topic. These include:

Literature reviews
Books or publications written by experts in the field, from reliable publishers

Do not use:

Blog posts
Sources that aren’t peer reviewed
Popular press articles

Evaluating sources

Learning to evaluate sources is a core component of engaging critically in your field and on Wikipedia.

The first consideration is the author. Authors published in a peer review process are preferred to authors who self-publish, whether that be a blog post or a book series. Of course, many experts in the field may write blog posts or conduct interviews that are not peer reviewed. These may be sources of information about the biographical details of an individual, but should not be used for sourcing factual data.

The second consideration is the text itself. Many writers, particularly in the popular press, wade into ecology territory, but rarely have proper training as scientists. Weigh the conclusions of pop press sources against the dominant conclusions in your field. Does it align with scholarly consensus? If so, use a scholarly source to contribute the same information to the article. Many pop press articles will cover a journal article’s conclusion. Find the original journal article, and use that for your source.

Finally, consider the publisher. Work cited could come from a reliable publisher of books and text books in environmental, science, biology, or related fields.

Take care citing as fact any material from publications which advocate strongly for a particular point of view. Such advocacy journals should only be used to provide examples of their particular viewpoints.

Depict information accurately

It’s crucial to take a critical eye not only to your sources, but to carefully evaluate your own writing and how it presents the information from those sources.

Unlike most school assignments, Wikipedia doesn’t permit original research. A Wikipedia article should cover what the literature says, not your interpretation.

For example, it’s perfectly acceptable to say that a species of lizard has been in decline since 1989. It’s also acceptable to say that runoff from a local factory has been found in that lizard’s habitat since 1989. But you should not connect these facts as related unless you can cite a reliable source that has connected these dots. Otherwise, this is original research, that is, presenting your own conclusion.

Likewise, be very careful about how you present facts related to the environment. It’s often easy to make a mental leap that isn’t supported by facts. For example, if a reliable source of information states that a fox species hasn’t been seen in specific region since 1907, you shouldn’t write “the fox disappeared from the region in 1907.” This is misrepresenting the findings; in fact, the fox simply hasn’t been seen. It may still be there.

Think carefully about the sources you use. Process information from many sources, and describe that information in your own words. But apply the same critical thinking you apply to other’s writing to your own writing. That way, you can be certain that the information you contribute to Wikipedia is accurate, factual, well-sourced, and valuable.

Start writing

As you start writing, remember to keep these guidelines in mind:
Be sure you’re writing impersonal, fact-based encyclopedic content, not an essay or blog post. See the Editing Wikipedia brochure linked from your course page if you need a refresher on the difference in tone.
Give appropriate weight to aspects of the topic as the literature covers it.
When mentioning technical terms for the first time, provide a short plain-English explanation in parentheses, if possible.
Let the facts speak for themselves. Respect your readers and recognize that empirical data doesn’t always lead two readers to the same conclusion.
If you discuss research, aim for a thorough description of its methodologies. This is why it is important to understand your material and cross-reference your understanding with a variety of sources.

Final thoughts

Don’t procrastinate! Writing good, reliable Wikipedia articles takes time. Don’t wait until the last minute. If you get stuck, always ask your instructor for extra time rather than adding content to Wikipedia that doesn’t meet these guidelines.
If you have additional questions about contributing to Wikipedia, you can ask the Wikipedia Content Expert listed on your course page, or post a question at the Teahouse. You can find the Teahouse by entering “WP:TH” into the search bar.
Check back on your page! Not only can it be interesting to see how your article grows, you may also have comments and suggestions from other editors, and want to get involved in new directions and developments.