Adding 85.9K Characters of Better Cell Biology to Wikipedia at ASCB 2015 Edit-a-Thon

Photo by John Fleischman.

Photo by John Fleischman.

The world’s largest encyclopedia gained a little more cell biology expertise Sunday, 85,900 characters to be exact. They were added at the ASCB Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon held at the Annual Meeting in San Diego by 39 volunteers who spent up to four hours learning how to edit pages, Wikipedia style. ASCB volunteers improved articles on Spermatheca (+608 characters), Cyanobacteriochrome (+834), Plasmid partition system (+3,483), ROCK1 (+887), and more (+80,888).

Wikipedia is viewed 8,000 times per second and has 37,000,000 page entries, according to John Tracey of the Simons Foundation, which sponsored the event sponsor and helped organize it. Tracey stressed the importance of involving scientists in Wikipedia editing as a tool for science outreach. A 2005 Nature study found that Wikipedia is as reliable as Encyclopedia Britannica, said Tracey, but there’s plenty of room for improvement.

Improving Wikipedia’s cell biology drew experienced Wikipedia editors, including ASCB members Jessica Polka, Ryan Denu, Gary McDowell, and Tim Fessenden. At the ASCB session, they acted as volunteer guides, leading attendees through the Wikipedia editing process, stressing the importance of adding references to strengthen edits. Without references, changes to Wikipedia pages are often rejected by other Wikipedia users. New edits that pass the (sometimes excessively rigorous) screening are said by experienced users to “stick” to the pages. A course page provided by the Simons Foundation tracked edits by those who signed up for the Edit-a-Thon.

In San Diego, McDowell (user: Biophysicalfrog) set the high mark at the Edit-a-Thon, adding 33,316 characters to pages including entries on Ubiquitin (+20,227) and Symmetry breaking and cortical rotation (+4,909). McDowell was awarded a Bose Bluetooth Color Speaker for tracking the most edits during the day’s event. “I’m pretty sure the edits won’t stick but I feel grand,” he tweeted.

About the Author:


Christina Szalinski is a science writer with a PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Pittsburgh.