Frank Schulenburg é o líder do "Public Outreach" da Wikimedia Foundation.

Abaixo, Schulenburg fala do seu trabalho e da sua visão sobre a relação da Wikimedia e Academia. *Como líder do projeto na WMF, que tipo de programas vocês vislumbram?*

FS: Meu foco é aumentar a participação e o entendimento da Wikipédia. Nós estamos atualmente trabalhando em três principais projetos:

(1) O “Bookshelf” Project para criar um conjunto de materiais educacionais para os novos contribuidores. Desde 2009 nós produzimos material impresse, online e vídeos que explicam a cultura da wikipédia, as regras, políticas, tudo para ajudar os novatos a fazer as 100 primeiras edições.

(2) Uma iniciativa de divulgação (the Public Policy Initiative) para institucionalizar a utilização da wikipédia como ferramenta de aprendizagem na educação superior. Como parte dessa iniciativa, nós treinamos Embaixadores de Campus, que ajudam professores e estudantes a usar a wikipédia em sala de aula.

(3) Melhorar o processo de criar uma conta na Wikipédia. Nós pensamos que criar uma conta é um momento crucial no ciclo de vida do editor da wikipédia e estamos buscando tonar o processo mais fácil, dando aos novatos mais ajuda e suporte.

*The Public Policy Initiative is of particular interest to academia, in that it addresses the role of Wikipedia in higher education. How does this program work and what are Wikimedia’s aims with this type of outreach?*

FS: The Public Policy Initiative is a pilot project that the Wikimedia Foundation is running during the 2010–11 academic year. Professors at public policy programs in universities in the United States are participating in our initiative by asking their students to improve articles on the English-language Wikipedia as part of the curriculum. The Foundation is providing professors support in the form of lesson plans and coordination with the community to provide Wikipedia Ambassadors, who are serving as mentors for the first-time Wikipedians.

We know that the use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool in university courses offers a number of opportunities for students. They improve their writing skills, gain a deeper understanding of media literacy, learn how to work collaboratively, and interact with readers and writers in real-time. We learned that students are much more motivated if they write for a global audience on Wikipedia compared to the traditional “throw-away assignments.” These factors make it very attractive for professors to explore using Wikipedia as a teaching tool.

Our vision is to create a world where every single person has access to the sum of all human knowledge. We see the use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool as an important step toward making this vision come true. Students make great contributors to Wikipedia because they’re immersed in a culture of learning, so sharing that knowledge with the world is a logical next step.

*Are there any plans to extend the Public Policy Initiative into other areas of study, such as the biomedical sciences?*

FS: The Public Policy Initiative represents the first time the Wikimedia Foundation has pushed to seed a community of contributors within higher education on a larger scale. Our first results are very promising, as professors across disciplines, universities, and countries have expressed interest in using Wikipedia as a teaching tool. While we are working only with U.S.-based public policy programs during the pilot program, we’re continually seeking opportunities to engage professors, students, and volunteers in other parts of the world and in other topic areas.

At the end of our pilot in September 2011, we will open the program for professors of other topic areas. Our goal is to institutionalize the use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool in higher education across all academic disciplines.

*When developing outreach programs, how do you envision the ideal role of Wikipedia in academics?*

FS: This goes back to the question about the nature of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a project to create a free encyclopedia. It is not a place to publish original research. All information on Wikipedia has to be based on verifiable information that has previously been published by a reliable source. Whenever we talk to students, we say that Wikipedia is a good starting point for their research, but it should never be the end point. You shouldn’t cite Wikipedia, but nor should you cite Encyclopedia Britannica. We believe that media literacy is a key skill for students in the 21st century, particularly with regards to online resources. Students should be able to look at a Wikipedia article or a blog post or a news article and judge whether or not it’s a valid source of information. With a Wikipedia article, for example, students should look for a lot of citations to sources like books, scholarly journals, and major news sources – if the article doesn’t have many citations or all of the citations are to the same source, the student should look elsewhere for sources (and come back and improve the Wikipedia article!).

For academics, Wikipedia offers a great opportunity to improve the publicly available information about their field. More than 400 million people use Wikipedia every month. If your goal is to let people share your knowledge about a specific topic, then Wikipedia is a great point to reach out to a broad audience.

*Some hesitation in using Wikipedia stems from uncertainty about the editing process-- while most articles are open to editing by any user, some are subject to higher regulation like the “pending changes” system. Can you provide a summary of the current editing system and guidelines?*

FS: Wikipedia was founded on radically open collaboration. Pick an article you know something about, and the “edit” link at the top allows you to make an instant change to the page. This open policy to editing has allowed impressive growth and responsiveness.

In 2009, the Wikipedia community agreed to a trial run which entailed installing a software extension called “pending changes”. Previously, a very limited number of high profile articles subject to ongoing vandalism were locked. When the pending changes feature is enabled for an article, edits are possible but they will not be visible to the general public until an established editor flags the article as free of vandalism. The pending changes feature replaced article locking with a lighter form of protection. This actually opened Wikipedia further by allowing new and unregistered users to suggest changes where they could not before. Aside from these few articles with the pending changes featured applied, articles are open for editing by any user. *For the most part, academia is asking what Wikipedia can do for them. But much of the growth of Wikipedia is dependent on their contribution. Do you have suggestions for what academics can do to help improve Wikipedia?*

FS: For academics, Wikipedia offers a great opportunity to improve the publicly available information about their field. More than 400 million people use Wikipedia every month. If your goal is to let people share your knowledge about a specific topic, then Wikipedia is a great point to reach out to a broad audience. I think that scientists and educators can help Wikipedia most if they participate in the existing review processes and if they use Wikipedia as a teaching tool in their classes.

There are many ways you can help improving Wikipedia. If you find an error, just click on the edit button on top of the page and fix it. If you want to leave a note, go to the talk page of an article. If you have more time, go to Wikipedia’s good article nominations page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_article_nominations) and featured articles candidates page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates) and look for articles in your specific field of expertise. Also, ask your students to improve Wikipedia articles, instead of assigning a traditional term paper. Your students will be much more motivated as they are writing for a global audience. The better the articles in your field of expertise get, the more they attract readers – and among them maybe the next generation of smart students that will be eager to learn more about your research.