A Wellington 'citizen scientist' has been honoured for her contributions to Wikipedia.
Siobhan Leachman has been named this year's Wikimedia Laureate at the annual Wikimania conference, held in Singapore. Hundreds of volunteer editors, including a strong Kiwi contingent attend the annual event.
Leachman is the first New Zealander to win the award, she told Nights.
“It's basically an award given in recognition for the body of work I've contributed to English Wikipedia and other wiki projects; things like the image repository, wikicommons, the data repository, wikidata.”
She started editing Wikipedia articles back in 2014.
“I started volunteering for the Smithsonian, which is a museum in America. And they had a citizen science project where they were asking people to help transcribe field notebooks, notebooks that scientists handwrite, and they wanted to be transcribed digitally.
Siobhan Leachman Photo: wikicommons
“The project manager there was saying, a lot of these scientists are actually notable for Wikipedia, but don't have a Wikipedia article.
"Perhaps volunteers want to try editing Wikipedia and so, with the encouragement of people from the Smithsonian, I started editing.”
She has done that remotely from Wellington ever since and says anyone can do it.
“There is an art to it, but anyone can edit. And I suggest that if you're new to it start out with easy things like correcting spelling mistakes, or making sure that there are references, adding references to articles.
“And then as you gradually get used to editing, you can start thinking about creating articles as you get more experience.”
Her area of interest is biodiversity, she says.
“I tend to write species articles, particularly about New Zealand endemic species, or articles on people involved in biodiversity work, say scientists, or particularly women scientists involved in biodiversity work.”
This is her first Wikimania, she says.
“At the conference, there's heaps of presentations. So, there's multiple people from multiple countries, involved in multiple different types of projects who come along and basically present what they're working on.
“We gather and we basically, exchange information skills and just have a general geek out about the wiki world.”
Wikipedia remains one of the top 10 sites in the world and is always looking for volunteers, she says.
“If you’re interested in learning, there's plenty of people in New Zealand who would love to teach people.”
