Wikipedia Visiting Scholars

Connecting experienced Wikipedians with academic institutions to improve Wikipedia.

Currently open positions:

Getting started with the Wikipedia Visiting Scholars program - guide for institutional sponsors

The Visiting Scholars program shares your research resources with experienced Wikipedians. In turn, these editors use the materials to improve articles on topics of mutual interest.

This page provides details about how a Scholarship is carried out. It's intended as a resource for institutional sponsors as they develop a call for applications, review candidates, begin working with a Visiting Scholar, or at any point thereafter. With a few noted exceptions, this guide should be considered guidance for best practices, not firm rules. The Scholarship agreement we ask you to use (linked below) is designed to facilitate discussion and documentation of the particulars covered on this page, and is not intended to serve as a formal contract.

Term

You should decide the length of the Scholarship prior to issuing the call for applications. Most Scholarships last for 12 months and begin at roughly the same time as an academic term (i.e. January, June, or September), but you can adjust the start date and length according to your needs or in conversation with the Scholar you've chosen to work with. If both you and the Scholar are satisfied at the end of the term, you may want to consider an additional term or switching to an indefinite "at-will" basis.

Communication

Don't feel pressured to dedicate more time to this program than you are comfortable with. You can decide how often you discuss progress with your Scholar. Some sponsors take an entirely hands-off approach, granting Scholars autonomy to do what they're good at: improving Wikipedia in predetermined topic areas. Communication can be as infrequent as a check-in at the beginning and end of the term. Other times, the sponsor and/or Scholar may wish to interact more regularly to discuss progress or plans. Some Scholars look forward to working with library staff, who can help them find sources or conduct research (all Scholars are experienced Wikipedians, but not all of them have experience with library resources). Discuss your preferences/needs and develop a communication plan early. We suggest a check-in every month or two, with other communication on an as-needed basis. Again, it's up to you.

Tracking work using the Dashboard

At the outset of the Visiting Scholarship, Wiki Education will create a page for it on the Dashboard, a tool that makes it easy to see which articles Scholars have been working on or plan to work on. The Dashboard automatically keeps track of article metrics like pageviews, words added, article quality, and images uploaded. All that's required is for the Scholar to visit the Dashboard page and add the names of articles he or she improves. If you don't notice a change, you may want to remind the Scholar to update it.

Topic areas and conflict of interest

In the call for applicants, sponsors are asked to specify one or more subject areas for a Visiting Scholar to work on. The application in turn asks Scholars to speak to their own interest in and experience with those subjects. Before you start, clarify that you and the Scholar understand the scope of these topics. We suggest discussing specific article examples to clarify that you're thinking about the topic in similar ways.

The Scholar cannot promote the university, its people, or its financial interests. In general, the Scholar should not be required to work on articles about the university, its centers, or its faculty, but is not prohibited from doing so insofar as those subjects relate to the broader topic area the Scholar is working on. Similarly, they should not be asked to prioritize citations of faculty publications, but are not prohibited from citing them where those publications are the best possible sources for a given purpose. There are several reasons for these rules. Perhaps most important, practically, is that Wikipedia has a strict conflict of interest policy (an extension of the core "neutral point of view" policy). If not followed carefully, editors face increased scrutiny, greater likelihood of contributions being removed or deleted, or even sanctions restricting their editing privileges. In general, although the institution sets the general topic area, selection of specific articles to improve should either be a collaborative process or left up to the Scholar. There is a potential for the conflict of interest policy to apply in any scenario where a Scholar's editing is heavily directed, rather than empowered, by a third party.

Conflict of interest rules on Wikipedia include a lot of gray area. If you have questions, please reach out to visitingscholars wikiedu.org

Goals

Visiting Scholars are typically already experienced Wikipedians, in part selected for their activity and interests, but sometimes institutions and Scholars set up some flexible goals early in the process. Goals can be based on a number of factors, such as overlapping topical interests, the importance of various articles to those topics, the Scholar's experience editing in a particular area, the amount of time the Scholar would like to dedicate, mission-based priorities you may have, etc.

Wikipedians contribute in a variety of ways. Some people are prolific, creating or improving many articles. Others focus on particular types of articles, such as biographies or timelines. Still others focus on quality, spending a great deal of time and effort to improve a very small number of articles. Each takes a different skill set and appeals to different kinds of people, so talk to the Scholar to determine what sorts of goals make sense for them.

Goals can be useful, but should not typically be very rigid. Visiting Scholars are volunteer editors with other jobs and responsibilities, so it's important there be some fluidity. As a program geared primarily towards active Wikipedia editors, lack of activity is not typically an issue.

Other expectations

Over the course of the Visiting Scholarship, the Scholar agrees to write at least one blog post reflecting on the impact he or she has had on Wikipedia while participating in the program, including some explanation for how access to your resources helped. This blog post will be on the Wiki Education website (wikiedu.org), and will be licensed such that it can be cross-posted where appropriate. Scholars will have the opportunity to write other blogs for Wiki Education, focused on particular activities or articles, if they so choose.

If you would also like the Scholar to, for example, give a remote presentation about his or her work, or put together another type of post/report, it's important for that to be specified before the relationship formally begins.

Scholars should not be required to participate in activities unrelated to their use of your materials and their improvement of Wikipedia. If you're looking for someone to help instructors teach with Wikipedia, train faculty or staff, promote library collections, present about Wikipedia broadly, or other such activities, contact Wiki Education or the Wikipedia Library to learn more about other programs. Of course, many Scholars do get involved with the institution in other ways. After all, people get involved with this program because of a passion for sharing knowledge on Wikipedia. Additional collaboration between you and the Scholar would simply be considered as outside of the Visiting Scholars agreement.

Scholarship agreement

We recommend recording the details of your agreement using the Wikipedia Visiting Scholars agreement form. It raises important questions to discuss and document for a Visiting Scholarship, and connects to much of the information on this page, so we recommend using it during your first conversation with the Scholar. It's not a contract, but a means to help set expectations, goals, plans, and processes. It's most effective when the institutional sponsor and Visiting Scholar review it together.

Wikipedia:Visiting Scholars/Sponsor/Getting started