Education/Newsletter/July 2015/Articles of interest in other publications
Wikipedia the granddaughter of encyclopedia Britannica breaks traditional concepts
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This article in La Jornada, a Mexican newspaper, discusses how Wikipedia started with a very simple idea: sharing knowledge freely with everyone, then with limited resources it was able to be one of the most visited websites on the internet. This year Wikimania, the annual conference of the Wikimedia movement was held in Mexico, which has one of the most active Wikipedia Education Programs around the world. The Wikimania Education Pre-conference discussed Wikipedia and its use as a teaching tool in the classroom.
Read the full article here (in Spanish).
West Virginia University hosts a Wikipedian in residence to help increase gender diversity on Wikipedia
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This fall, West Virginia University will host the first Wikipedian in residence working on increasing gender diversity on Wikipedia. This Wikipedian in Residence will encourage creating articles about notable women in West Virginia. WVU is looking forward to strengthening the women-related content on the internet with this project.
Harvard study: 'Free' Wikipedia photos worth at least $246 million a year
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A researcher at Harvard University surveyed the Wikipedia entries for 362 best-selling authors. The study suggests that the free photos in their articles added around 77,400 USD to the value of those pages in 5 years which means around $246-$270 million/year for Wikipedia in general! The study also found that around 90% of the authors born between 1850 to 1890 had a photo in their articles compared to 50% only of the pages about authors born after 1920.