Do I know anyone who is experienced in contributing to Wikipedia who might be able to help answer a Q? I'm curious if someone wanted to contribute to Wikipedia as a part of a job-role in public education / outreach, is there a way to create a non-personal (e.g. work-linked) account for editing? - ThreadSky

alisonatkin.bsky.social • 35 days ago

Do I know anyone who is experienced in contributing to Wikipedia who might be able to help answer a Q? I'm curious if someone wanted to contribute to Wikipedia as a part of a job-role in public education / outreach, is there a way to create a non-personal (e.g. work-linked) account for editing?

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lizgloyn.bsky.social•35 days ago

@tigerlilyrocks.bsky.social Any insights?

tigerlilyrocks.bsky.social•35 days ago

All the answers here are really useful, I would say basically nothing to stop you, just be aware of Conflict of Interest guidelines and crack on! If you get something wrong, another editor will be quick to tell you!

sarahfromdata.bsky.social•35 days ago

You could create a focused account with a work email. There's no particular issue with multiple accounts as long as they aren't used for impersonation and getting around restrictions (reviewing your own edits, for example).

sarahfromdata.bsky.social•35 days ago

Usually you should flag relationships between your accounts, but if you want to maintain privacy and don't use the accounts for chaos or evil, no one will bother you.

More details at the link of official policies.. scroll down to the "legitimate uses" section. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry

alisonatkin.bsky.social•35 days ago

Thanks! I don't actually have a personal account on Wikipedia, so there wouldn't be any link between a potential new 'work' account and any other at this point, but this is good to know in case I do decide to create a personal account in the future.

annapjudson.bsky.social•35 days ago

All Wikipedia accounts can be as personal or anonymous as you like. So if you wanted to, for instance, make it clear that you were working as editor as part of this kind of job, with or without revealing your name/organisation, you could certainly do so

carvehername.bsky.social•35 days ago

You can create an account using any email.

One thing to be aware of is that wikipedia editors are very hot on conflict of interest and you'd need to follow the COI guide very carefully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest

alisonatkin.bsky.social•35 days ago

Thanks! Yes, I've been reading through all of the guidelines (and just all of the general explainers). I can't see there being any COI issues, but it is definitely something I will keep in mind and make sure I'm following the guides.

carvehername.bsky.social•35 days ago

It depends if someone decides the public outreach you'd be doing counts as PR, basically. There are networks and projects on wikipedia who might be able to support you. For example, I'm part of Women in Red who aim to increase the ratio of women's biographies.

carvehername.bsky.social•35 days ago

So one option, depending how your work is set up, is to flag articles, books etc to relevant projects. They then do the editing (or decide it doesn't meet notability criteria). COI avoided! ;)

alisonatkin.bsky.social•35 days ago

Thanks. I'm reading through some of the GLAM pages right now, to see if there's maybe a fit there (or maybe they can point me in the right direction). It's less about what's in the institutions' collections and more because we're researching topics anyways, why not update Wikipedia at the same time?

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