Wikipedia:WiR/Global Systems Institute/Project progress

AboutHow to editEventsProject progress100 Days
100 Edits

Cumulative results

Poster for the first Edit for Climate Change Editathon on the 26th of January 2023.

From October 2022 to end of September 2024 the total number of articles edited across two languages (English and Spanish) under this project since October 2022 is just under 500, which have been viewed approximately 98.8M times from the date they were first edited until 30th September 2024.

Key outcomes: Year 2

In Year 2, 128 climate-related English Wikipedia articles have been created or improved, and were viewed >11.3M times. An additional 17 pages were edited on Spanish Wikipedia. Cumulatively, these have been viewed 289K times since they were edited. The grand total for Y2 is 145 edited pages viewed 11.6M times.

See also 100 Days 100 Edits.

Key outcomes: Year 1

As of end September 2023,

• more than 75 editors have been trained over 8 editathon events.
• 287 articles have been edited (as a cumulative effort from both trainers (4) and trainees).
• These articles have been viewed over 13.8 million times since they were first edited.
• Of these, 19 articles have undergone completed expert review.

One student undertook a Wikipedia-focussed project as part of their MSc Global Sustainability Solutions degree. Project title: Climate communication on Wikipedia: Investigating the impacts of improving the readibility of climate communication article leads on Wikipedia.

List of articles edited

Below is a list of all articles worked on as part of this project. This includes articles worked on by volunteers at or following editathons, as well as articles specially selected for expert review. A handful of these articles are redirects.

Editathon Campaign Dashboard (kindly note that the reported stats on the dashboard may not match the reported stats in this article, due to recent updates to the Dashboard, as well as repeat editor attendance over multiple editathon events).

List of reviewers

Over 50 individual researchers were contacted about providing a review. This is a list of reviewers who provided a review.

#	Article	Reviewer(s)	Affilitation at time of review
1	Social cost of carbon	Eleanor (Pu) Yang	University of Exeter
2	Rewilding (conservation biology)	Virginia Thomas	University of Exeter
3	Tipping points in the climate system	David Armstrong McKay	University of Exeter
4	Solar geoengineering	Matthew Henry	University of Exeter
5	Restoration ecology	Matteus Silva	University of Exeter
6	Effects of climate change on human health	Reza Zamani	Retired, previously University of Exeter
7	Pollution (Section: Effects - Human Health)	Reza Zamani	Retired, previously University of Exeter
8	Mire (now Peatland)	Terhi Ruitta & Carol Signori Muller	University of Exeter
9	Peat swamp forest	Terhi Ruitta & Carol Signori Muller	University of Exeter
10	Methane	Terhi Ruitta & Carol Signori Muller	University of Exeter
11	Marsh gas	Terhi Ruitta & Carol Signori Muller	University of Exeter
12	Alternative fuel vehicle	Pedro Guertler	E3G
13	Greenhouse gas emissions	Pedro Guertler	E3G
14	Hydrogen	Pedro Guertler	E3G
15	Hydrogen economy	Pedro Guertler	E3G
16	Hydrogen fuel	Pedro Guertler	E3G
17	Hydrogen safety	Pedro Guertler	E3G
18	Sustainable energy	Pedro Guertler	E3G
19	Sustainable transport	Pedro Guertler	E3G

Note: this project contributed to the 8 articles with Pedro Guertler as a reviewer in a support capacity. These reviews were driven by User:Clayoquot as a resident at the Hydrogen Science Coalition.

Media uploaded to Commons

An example image from the library sourced during this project: Flooding aftermath of Cyclone Idai, Mozambique.

See Category: "Files uploaded from Global Systems Institute Wikimedian in Residence project activities".

The category includes uploads from Climate Visuals and Our World in Data.

With special thanks to User:Jason.nlw.

Method: Article selection

Editathons

A list of articles was prepared for editathons to prompt new editors on where they could start editing. Articles were selected for this list based on the following criteria:

• Topic is related to climate change.
• Article is tagged by WikiProject Climate Change, especially the Popular articles list.
• Article may have been identified as needing improvement on the Cleanup listing for WikiProject Climate change or in other pages (e.g.: Talk pages).
• Articles with lower quality scores quality scores were prioritised over those with higher quality scores (at least B and below).
• Articles with a higher number of pageviews are prioritised over those with less views.

Suggested article selection for editathons was a balance between high impact (high importance, high pageviews) articles and articles with clear tasks, so as to lower the barrier to entry for newer editors. The list of suggested articles is also not prescriptive; so as not to alienate anyone, participants can also select their own articles to edit based on their knowledge and/or interests. Consequently, the list of articles edited, under Key outcomes above is not identical to the list of suggested articles prepared for editathons.

In some instances articles with lower views but which are of a very poor quality (especially if they contain misinformation or unbalanced viewpoints) are also included, as edits could stand to make a dramatic improvement.

Expert review

The following criteria were considered when selecting articles for expert review:

• Topic is related to climate change.
• Article is tagged by WikiProject Climate Change, especially the Popular articles list (article-driven) AND/OR Topic is related to climate change expertise at the University of Exeter (expertise-driven).
• Preference for high importance articles with lower quality scores. HOWEVER, if an article with lower page views can be reasonably deemed as useful to decision-makers, it was also selected.

In some instances articles not tagged by WikiProject Climate Change were included, especially if there was an opportunity to add a relevant climate change link to an article that did not already have one (for example, adding information on building carbon emissions to the Building article).

For the purposes of this project, an expert is considered to be PhD student level and up, including research associates and fellows. Initially, higher level academics were targeted, but the approach has since shifted to target their PhD students and postdocs, who likely have more time available for reviews. Where edits are made as part of an expert review, this is disclosed on the Talk page of the relevant article.