Piotr Konieczny

Rethinking Wikipedia for the Classroom

Sociologist Piotr Konieczny focuses on the issue of Wikipedia’s reception in the world of academia: in the background of slowly growing acceptance of it as an educational tool, why is a significant portion of the researchers and instructors still uneasy with it?

Teaching with Wikipedia in a 21st-century classroom: Perceptions of Wikipedia and its educational benefits

This article explores the current perception of Wikipedia in academia, focusing on both the reasons for its unpopularity among some and the reasons for its growing acceptance among others. First, the reasons that Wikipedia is still struggling to gain acceptance among many academics and higher education professionals are identified. These include common misconceptions about Wikipedia, doubts about its quality, uneasiness with the challenge that it poses to the traditional peer‐review system, and a lack of career‐enhancing motivations related to using Wikipedia. Second, the benefits of teaching with Wikipedia for educators, students, and the wider society, as discussed in the current teaching literature, are explored. Finally, the article presents an argument for using Wikipedia in a variety of ways to help students develop critical and academic writing skills.

The day Wikipedia stood still: Wikipedia’s editors’ participation in the 2012 anti-SOPA protests as a case study of online organization empowering international and national political opportunity structures

This article contributes to the discussions on Internet mobilization and on international social movements’ ability to influence national policy. The event studied is the ‘first Internet strike’ of 18 January 2012 aimed against the SOPA legislation proposed in the USA. Wikipedia’s volunteer editors from all around the world took part in the vote concerning whether Wikipedia should undertake a protest action aimed at influencing American policymakers. Wikipedia editors are shown to share values of the international free culture movement, though experienced editors were also likely to be conflicted about whether taking part in a protest action was not violating the site’s principle of encyclopedic neutrality. Further, Wikipedia’s participation in this protest action allowed non-US citizens to have a visible impact on the US national legislation. As such, Wikipedia can be seen as an international social movement organization, whose 24 hour-long blackout of its popular website was a major factor in the success of the anti-SOPA protests. Wikipedia’s blackout was an expression of an international political opportunity structure in the form of worldwide awareness and protests, which in turn enabled a national political opportunity structure by informing and mobilizing American citizens.

Wikipedia in the world of global gender inequality indices: what the biography gender gap is measuring

While Wikipedias editor gender gap is important but difficult to measure, its biographical gender gap can more readily be measured. We correlate a Wikipedia-derived gender inequality indicator (WIGI), with four widespread gender inequality indices in use today (GDI, GEI, GGGI, and SIGI). Analysing their methodologies and correlations to Wikipedia, we find evidence that Wikipedias bias in biographical coverage is related to the gender bias in positions of social power.

Gender gap through time and space: A journey through Wikipedia biographies via the Wikidata Human Gender Indicator:

In this study, we investigate how quantification of Wikipedia biographies can shed light on worldwide longitudinal gender inequality trends, a macro-level dimension of human development. We present the Wikidata Human Gender Indicator (WHGI), located within a set of indicators allowing comparative study of gender inequality through space and time, the Wikipedia Gender Indicators (WIGI), based on metadata available through the Wikidata database. Our research confirms that gender inequality is a phenomenon with a long history, but whose patterns can be analyzed and quantified on a larger scale than previously thought possible. Through the use of Inglehart–Welzel cultural clusters, we show that gender inequality can be analyzed with regard to world’s cultures. We also show a steadily improving trend in the coverage of women and other genders in reference works.

Book Review: Dariusz Jemielniak, Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia

book, ‘The Last Lap’, guides readers on how to write a project report. Davies and Hughes provide practical advice around writing early, keeping a detailed list of thoughts and references, and taking your work through a series of drafts. Davies and Hughes are ambitious; aiming to practically guide you through a research project from start to finish in fewer than 300 pages. This is great for those readers who want a condensed overview on how to conduct a research project. Brief paragraphs on topics such as writing a literature review or dealing with issues of intellectual property are just enough to kick-start thinking around these issues. The readers’ relationship with this textbook is akin to that of a supervisor and their student; advice and guidance is offered, yet it is up to the individual researcher to explore each issue in greater depth. In order to facilitate this, Davies and Hughes provide their top picks for books for further reading. The frequent ‘checklists’ or ‘ten-step guides’ work well, leading me to pause and rethink different aspects of my own PhD project. I found myself nodding my head in agreement as the authors raise issues such as being swamped by too much material, or managing expectations around what’s achievable in a research project. Like most students setting out on their first self-directed research project, within the first few months of my candidacy I was plagued with anxiety; how was I to get this all done in three years? Would my research produce novel findings? How specific should my research focus be? Davies and Hughes work to identify a great number of these anxieties and provide soothing retorts. Unfortunately, at times I felt that Hughes and Davies’ ambition to condense an entire research guide into a short book forced them into overly simplistic explanations. For instance, the entire process of selecting your methodology and understanding your ontological and epistemological approach is covered in just over three pages. Hughes and Davies claim that these concepts are “not essential understanding for a student research project” (p. 25). I think this is a missed opportunity to engage students in thinking critically about how we do research and how the knowledge we create shapes our world. For its intended purpose you cannot fault this book: it is a starting point for new researchers, and a stripped-back guide to conducting your first research project. I would recommend this book to new and experienced researchers alike. Students who are just starting out on their first piece of independent research will get the most out of it. Yet, even those researchers who have successfully carried a number projects to completion stand to benefit from getting ‘back to basics’ and thumbing through different sections, reminding themselves of the key steps behind every successful research project.

Book Review: Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia

book, ‘The Last Lap’, guides readers on how to write a project report. Davies and Hughes provide practical advice around writing early, keeping a detailed list of thoughts and references, and taking your work through a series of drafts. Davies and Hughes are ambitious; aiming to practically guide you through a research project from start to finish in fewer than 300 pages. This is great for those readers who want a condensed overview on how to conduct a research project. Brief paragraphs on topics such as writing a literature review or dealing with issues of intellectual property are just enough to kick-start thinking around these issues. The readers’ relationship with this textbook is akin to that of a supervisor and their student; advice and guidance is offered, yet it is up to the individual researcher to explore each issue in greater depth. In order to facilitate this, Davies and Hughes provide their top picks for books for further reading. The frequent ‘checklists’ or ‘ten-step guides’ work well, leading me to pause and rethink different aspects of my own PhD project. I found myself nodding my head in agreement as the authors raise issues such as being swamped by too much material, or managing expectations around what’s achievable in a research project. Like most students setting out on their first self-directed research project, within the first few months of my candidacy I was plagued with anxiety; how was I to get this all done in three years? Would my research produce novel findings? How specific should my research focus be? Davies and Hughes work to identify a great number of these anxieties and provide soothing retorts. Unfortunately, at times I felt that Hughes and Davies’ ambition to condense an entire research guide into a short book forced them into overly simplistic explanations. For instance, the entire process of selecting your methodology and understanding your ontological and epistemological approach is covered in just over three pages. Hughes and Davies claim that these concepts are “not essential understanding for a student research project” (p. 25). I think this is a missed opportunity to engage students in thinking critically about how we do research and how the knowledge we create shapes our world. For its intended purpose you cannot fault this book: it is a starting point for new researchers, and a stripped-back guide to conducting your first research project. I would recommend this book to new and experienced researchers alike. Students who are just starting out on their first piece of independent research will get the most out of it. Yet, even those researchers who have successfully carried a number projects to completion stand to benefit from getting ‘back to basics’ and thumbing through different sections, reminding themselves of the key steps behind every successful research project.