The case for Wikipedia editing in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles are widely read and trusted, there is much low hanging fruit for improvement, and editing Wikipedia has low barriers to entry and is relatively low effort. Consequently, improving a Wikipedia article may benefit the reasoning and actions of its thousands, and often millions, of readers. Moreover, since Wikipedia is a global public good, improvements to Wikipedia are likely undersupplied relative to the socially optimal level.
Careful prioritisation is crucial. Improving or creating some Wikipedia articles could easily be 100x to 1,000x as valuable as others. The key factors to consider for prioritisation are (i) pageviews, (ii) audience, (iii) topic, (iv) room for improvement, and (v) language.
Respecting Wikipedia community rules and norms is key. The Wikipedia community is wary of people making edits to promote a particular idea, person, or organisation, especially when there are relevant conflicts of interest. Consequently, edits that violate Wikipedia rules and norms may be actively harmful and are likely to be deleted. However, there are currently still very many genuine gaps in the quality and coverage of Wikipedia articles, and filling these gaps tends to workwell and is regarded highly.
Contributing to or starting a WikiProject on an important topic may be valuable. A WikiProject is a group of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. A WikiProject allows for more efficient collaboration, by providing a centralised place where interested editors can make plans and discuss proposals.
There are self-interested reasons to edit Wikipedia. In particular, Wikipedia editing can be really fun, it is a great opportunity to learn more about a topic, it may help you improve your writing, and it may be a useful signal in some communities or for some professional opportunities.
Some EA-relevant content is better suited to a specialised EA Wiki than to Wikipedia. For instance, content that is too niche to meet Wikipedia’s notability requirements.
Please note that much of this post is not original, drawing on existing writing (see the “Relevant Resources” section). However, I felt it was important to add to, synthesise and popularise these ideas here on the forum. Any mistakes are my own.
2. Respecting Wikipedia Rules
Before giving the positive argument for Wikipedia editing, I want to stress the importance of becoming familiar with and respecting the rules and norms governing Wikipedia editing.
Lack of familiarity with the relevant rules and norms is one of the main reasons editors have their contributions reverted. The most important ones include:
Neutral point of view: “All Wikipedia articles (...) must be written from a neutral point of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias.”
No original research: “Wikipedia does not publish original thought (...) Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources.”
Notability: “Article and list topics must be notable, or “worthy of notice”. (...) if no reliable, independent sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article.”
Conflict of interest (COI): “COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia about yourself, family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial and other relationships. (...) COI editing is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia.”
Paid-contribution disclosure: “If you are paid in any way for contributing to Wikipedia, disclose it. (...) those with a conflict of interest, including paid editors, are very strongly discouraged from directly editing affected articles”[1]
“Content hosted in Wikipedia is not for: Advocacy, propaganda, or recruitment of any kind: commercial, political, scientific, religious, national, sports-related, or otherwise. An article can report objectively about such things, as long as an attempt is made to describe the topic from a neutral point of view.”
We should not use Wikipedia as a self-promotional tool. Doing so would be one easy way to make enemies and hurt our cause. However, what we can do is notice the (sometimes significant) lacunae in the material that is available on Wikipedia and selectively add those topics that we think would have the highest social value if they were more widely known.
Therefore, anyone considering making contributions to Wikipedia should become familiar with its rules, and in particular adhere to the requirement not to approach editing as an advocacy tool. This is important both because trying to paint an overly favourable picture of EA-related topics will, as Brian notes above, likely backfire, and because observing such a requirement is in line with EA’s commitment to intellectual honesty and moral cooperation. Wikipedia is one of the world’s greatest altruistic projects—their contributors share many of our core values, and we should respect their norms and efforts to maintain Wikipedia’s high quality.
3. Why You Should Consider Editing Wikipedia
Importance of Wikipedia Editing
Pageviews
Wikipedia articles tend to get very many pageviews. Wikipedia is the thirteenth most popular site on the web and “the printed encyclopedias of the past, although well‐known and much used, never came close to this level of general usage” (Haider and Sundin, 2021) . For the great majority of people, editing Wikipedia will get their writing (vastly) more readers than if they used the same time to write, for example, blog posts, social media posts, magazine articles, or books.[2]
Wikipedia articles perform very highly on search engines, frequently placing them at or near the top of search results. Consequently, Wikipedia pages for a given entity, such as a person or an organisation, often attract more pageviews than that entity’s official website.
A great tool to get an overview of how many people read Wikipedia articles is the Wikipedia pageviews tool. What follows are a few screenshots displaying the pageviews for a selection of articles relevant to EA. The tool clearly shows that (i) some of these articles get a very large number of pageviews, and (ii) some pages get orders of magnitude more traffic than others.
Pageviews of articles relevant to EA interests (link)
Credibility
People tend to trust what is written on Wikipedia. Therefore, as Tomasik (2013) states, “if you want to share factual information rather than an opinion, Wikipedia will not only bring it to more people but will do so more persuasively”.
For instance, this study concludes that “survey results indicate that people tend to find Wikipedia information to be fairly credible” (Flanagin & Metzger, 2011). And this (widely-cited though admittedly rather outdated) study found that “the accuracy of Wikipedia is high” and that the mean credibility score assigned by subject-matter experts to Wikipedia articles was around 3 on a scale from 1 (very credible) to 7 (very incredible) (Chesney, 2006). In addition, this 2014 survey found that the British public trusts Wikipedia contributors more than even the most trusted journalists.
Evidence of Real-World Impacts
There is some preliminary research that suggests Wikipedia articles have real-world impacts. Here are some examples of this kind of research:
A 2017 study found that “Incorporating ideas into Wikipedia leads to those ideas being used more in the scientific literature. (...) we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations.” (Thompson & Hanley, 2017)
Another 2017 study found that “information on Wikipedia has a sizable impact on consumption choices. Our estimates show that adding about 2,000 characters (approximately two paragraphs) of text and one photo to a city’s Wikipedia page increased the number of nights spent in this city by about 9% during the tourist season compared to cities in the control group.” (Hinnosaar et al., 2017)
A 2021 study notes that “by linking to external websites, Wikipedia can act as a gateway to the Web” and that “Wikipedia frequently serves as a stepping stone between search engines and third-party websites.” (Piccardi et al., 2021)
This preliminary research highlights the value not only of contributing to Wikipedia but also of conducting further research on the impact of such contributions.
Tractability of Wikipedia Editing
Low-Hanging Fruit
Many Wikipedia articles on important topics have substantial room for improvement. To name just a few of the key problems: articles are often incomplete, outdated, badly written or structured; they contain factual errors or lack relevant sources; or have not been translated to other (high priority) languages. Someone with relevant subject knowledge could often come in and substantially improve articles on the topics they know most about.
There seems to be a correlation between readership and article quality: More widely-read articles tend to be more complete and of higher quality. Consequently, in choosing which articles to edit, there usually is a trade-off between an article’s pageviews and the tractability of improving the article because more of the low-hanging fruit will already have been picked.
Low Barriers to Entry
It is very easy to begin editing Wikipedia for a few key reasons: First, the scope of Wikipedia edits can vary from tiny (e.g. correcting a typo), to medium (e.g. adding a new section to an existing article), to large (e.g. creating a new article). Second, Wikipedia editing is highly flexible: anyone can start editing anywhere, anytime, immediately (if they have internet access). Third, Wikipedia’s visual editing interface is so intuitive that it is essentially self-explanatory and is sufficient for most edits. Even learning to use Wikipedia’s source editing interface is relatively easy.
Editing Is Low Effort
Editing Wikipedia does not require (and actually does not permit) adding any original ideas or research. Fortunately, summarising existing research and insights is relatively low effort. For most people with subject-specific knowledge, it may be easy to contribute some of that knowledge to an appropriate Wikipedia article. For instance, as they write the literature review section for an academic paper, a graduate student may consider including a simplified summary of that review in a relevant Wikipedia article.
Neglectedness of Wikipedia Editing
Considering the potential importance and tractability of improving Wikipedia articles, Wikipedia editing is very neglected. In many (small) fields, only relatively few people (if any) tend to be active Wikipedia editors. Accordingly, a single person may be able to make a substantial difference to the quality of articles in their respective field or topic of interest.
It is not entirely surprising that Wikipedia editing is neglected: Wikipedia is a global public good (i.e. it is non-rivalrous, non-excludable, and available everywhere). Consequently, Wikipedia editing is likely undersupplied relative to the socially optimal level. A key reason for this is that the incentives to edit Wikipedia are insufficient: (i) there are no monetary rewards, (ii) editing is mostly anonymous, and (iii) in most (but not all) social contexts, you are likely to get less credit for Wikipedia editing than for more traditional activities (such as writing a book, blog posts, or insightful social media posts). This provides a great opportunity for altruistically-motivated people to close some of the gap between the demand for and the supply of high-quality Wikipedia articles.
Other Benefits of Wikipedia Editing
Enjoyment
Wikipedia editing can be highly rewarding. Many Wikipedia editors, including me (and Brian Tomasik), find the activity very enjoyable and motivating.
Potential Professional Value
Wikipedia user profiles are publicly visible and can be linked to a real person—for instance, by making your real name your user name or by adding relevant details about you to your Wikipedia user page. You could then add your Wikipedia profile to a CV or on LinkedIn. Depending on your profession, potential employers may be impressed by a good Wikipedia track record (this likely includes most EA organisations) .
Learning Value
Wikipedia editing can be a great way to learn more about a topic. Improving an article will often involve reading, understanding, and synthesising insights from secondary sources such as academic papers. There is extensive research showing that this kind of active engagement with the subject matter—as opposed to passive highlighting or copying of relevant passages from a book—improves understanding and aids retention.[3]
That said, it is usually better to focus on Wikipedia articles on topics you already know a fair amount about to reduce the risk of accidentally spreading incorrect information.
Improving Your Writing Style
Wikipedia follows a particular encyclopedic writing style. In line with this style, editing Wikipedia may help you to learn to write in a way that is concise, clear, and avoids unnecessary jargon or ambiguity. Moreover, it lets you practice good epistemic norms by forcing you to weigh different arguments and reference respectable sources. On the other hand, Wikipedia’s style makes it unsuited for practicing most non-encyclopedic writing, such as creative writing or promotional writing.
4. Prioritising Wikipedia Edits
Arguably, improving some Wikipedia articles is several orders of magnitude more valuable than improving others. For instance, article X may get 1,000x more pageviews than article Y, and X’s topic may be 10x more important than Y’s; all else being equal, it would be 10,000x more socially valuable to improve X than Y. Consequently, it is very important for altruists to prioritise carefully which Wikipedia articles to improve.
Some of the most important factors to prioritise between Wikipedia articles may be as follows:
Pageviews: More is better, all else being equal. As shown above, the differences in the number of pageviews can be enormous.
Audience: It matters not only how many people read an article but also who these people are. For instance, articles on certain niche topics in moral philosophy (e.g. population ethics) may be more likely to be read by a relatively more influential audience, such as students and researchers interested in global priorities research.
Topic: Some topics are more altruistically important than others. Even ignoring all other considerations, it is likely (much) more important to improve the article on Global catastrophic risk than the article on Toilet paper orientation.[4]
Room for improvement: Less complete and lower-quality articles are easier to improve since there is more low-hanging fruit left to pick. Relatedly, editing is easier when there are lots of reliable sources available whose insights can be integrated and referenced.
Language: It is usually more important to improve English-language Wikipedia articles than those in other languages. English-language articles tend to receive many more views than their counterparts in other languages, usually by one or two orders of magnitude (see below). Moreover, articles from the English Wikipedia often serve as templates for translations into other languages. This is typically done by editors proficient in the target language, but increasingly it involves the use of machine translation. (The second largest Wikipedia by number of articles is the Cebuano Wikipedia, with over 6 million articles. The vast majority of these articles were created by the automated program Lsjbot.) However, English-language Wikipedia articles tend to be more complete and higher-quality, meaning there may be less low-hanging fruit left to pick.
For illustration, the following tables display the number of pageviews for the top 10 language versions of several EA-related Wikipedia articles.
An alternative to improving English Wikipedia articles is to translate these articles into other languages. When translating articles, it is important to adhere to the Wikipedia translation guidelines. Moreover, please note that community norms and rules may differ (slightly) between different language Wikipedias (e.g. what is regarded as “notable” enough to justify an article on the topic).
Here are some pros and cons from Tomasik (2013) for translating compared against contributing new content to the English article:
Pros:
Translation is faster than writing from scratch, potentially much faster. This means you can make available many more words of text per unit time than if you made novel contributions.
There may be fewer existing foreign-language articles on the web about a given topic, so the marginal value of an additional article may be higher in a foreign language.
Depending on your moods and inclinations, you might enjoy translating more (or less) than contributing to the English article.
Cons:
One of the most important downsides is that when translating, you learn far less personally than when adding new content. 90% of the effort of adding to Wikipedia for me lies in reading the source articles that I’m writing about or the Wikipedia page where I’m adding them, and those are things I’d want to be doing anyway, which is why I find Wikipedia contributing to have low opportunity cost. In contrast, translating would involve more menial work.
Foreign pages have fewer readers.
The English Wikipedia is likely to be the “state of the art” of the field (i.e., better than versions in other languages on average). It seems arguably most important to advance the “state of the art.”
Creating New Articles vs Editing Existing Articles
There is no general rule to decide whether it is more valuable to create new Wikipedia articles or improve existing ones. One advantage of the latter is that you can already see how popular the article is (in terms of pageviews) to inform your judgment of the value of improving that article. In contrast, when deciding whether to create a new article, you will have much less information about the article’s potential popularity.
Editing Other Wikimedia Projects
Wikipedia is only one among several projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. These other projects function analagously to Wikipedia (i.e. anyone can edit articles/items) and include, amongst others:
Wikimedia Commons: a repository of images, sounds, videos, and general media
Wikidata: a knowledge base for centrally storing the structured data of other Wikimedia projects
This raises the question of whether to prioritise contributing to Wikipedia or a different Wikimedia project. Overall, Wikipedia seems by far the most important and popular (in terms of pageviews) of these projects.[5]That is, it will usually be (much) more valuable to improve a Wikipedia article on a given topic than, for instance, the equivalent Wikiquote article. On the other hand, there may be more low hanging fruit left to pick in other Wikimedia projects.
Note that Wikipedia articles directly integrate much of the content hosted on Wikimedia Commons. Thus, it can be very valuable to create and upload relevant media (e.g. graphs and illustrations) to Wikimedia Commons (while following the copyright rules) and then include them in a suitable Wikipedia article.
5. WikiProjects of Special Relevance to EA
A WikiProject is a group of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia has about 2,000 WikiProjects, about half of which are active. A WikiProject allows for more efficient collaboration by providing a centralised place where interested editors can make plans and discuss proposals.
There is currently no WikiProject on effective altruism. However, some WikiProjects have within their scope topics of EA relevance (HT Rob Bensinger), including:
A list of all existing WikiProjects, with activity status and creation dates, can be found here.
You may want to become involved in one or more of these existing projects, depending on your interests and personal fit. More ambitiously, you may also want to consider starting a new WikiProject (for instance, one on effective altruism). Here is what Wikipedia says about the process for creating a new WikiProject:
If the project doesn’t yet exist, but you’ve found interested editors, it’s time to propose your project idea! Go to the WikiProject proposals page and search that page and its archives to see if your project idea has been proposed before (if it has, be prepared to justify why you feel this time the project will succeed). Follow the instructions on that page to create a proposal. You’ll need to list the pages and categories that are key to your proposed group, as well as current WikiProjects that relate to those pages. Then interested users will sign-up to support the project (feel free to advertise this at related projects or pages. (...) While there are no hard rules for what constitutes “sufficient” support, projects that are likely to succeed tend to start with at least 6 to 12 active Wikipedians. Once that threshold is reached, the proposal can be considered successful and the project created (...) If there is insufficient support to start the project after a few months, the proposal will generally be archived for future reference.
It appears that there was an early proposal to create a WikiProject on EA, which was rejected. However, this proposal was made back in 2013 by a single user with just four edits, so it doesn’t seem like it should count as a negative precedent.
6. Getting Started as a Wikipedia Editor
You have decided to give Wikipedia editing a go. Great! Where do you get started? Fortunately, Wikipedia has a guide for that: Wikipedia: Getting started.
Becoming Familiar With Wikipedia’s Rules
Don’t feel like you need to have read all articles about Wikipedia rules and norms before you can start to edit. While reading them upfront may help you avoid some frustrating experiences later, the biggest failure mode is getting overwhelmed and being discouraged from ever taking the first step on your editing journey. Most of Wikipedia’s rules and norms are commonsensical, and you are bound to become familiar with them as you gather editing experience.
That said, if you read only a single article before you started editing, I would recommend Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia. Below is a list of the ten rules from the article, including some highlights, but I recommend reading the original.
“By logging in you can build a record of good edits, and it is easier to communicate and collaborate with others if you have a fixed, reputable identity. Finally, registering an account provides access to enhanced editing features, including a “watchlist” for monitoring articles you have edited previously.”
Wikipedia “is not an appropriate venue to promote your pet theory or share unpublished results. It is also not a soapbox on which to expound your personal theories or a battleground to debate controversial issues.”
“Many new editors feel intimidated about contributing to Wikipedia at first, fearing they may a mistake. Such reticence is understandable but unfounded. The worst that can happen is your first edits are deemed not to be an improvement and they get reverted. If this does occur, treat it as a positive learning experience and ask the reverting editor for advice.”[6]
Know Your Audience
“Wikipedia is not primarily aimed at experts; therefore, the level of technical detail in its articles must be balanced against the ability of non-experts to understand those details.”
“With certain conditions, almost all of Wikipedia’s content is free for anyone to reuse, adapt, and distribute. Consequently, it does not accept non-free material under copyright restriction.”
“Wikipedia has a strict inclusion policy that demands verifiability. This is best established by attributing each statement in Wikipedia to a reliable, published source.”
Avoid Self-Promotion
“Think twice, also, before writing about your mentors, colleagues, competitors, inventions, or projects. Doing so places you in a conflict of interest and inclines you towards unintentional bias.”
Share Your Expertise, but Don’t Argue from Authority
“Writing about a subject about which you have academic expertise is not a conflict of interest; indeed, this is where we can contribute to Wikipedia most effectively.”
“All articles in Wikipedia should be impartial in tone and content. When writing, do state facts and facts about notable opinions, but do not offer your opinion as fact.”
Ask for Help
“Wikipedia can be a confusing place for the inexperienced editor. (...) Thankfully, the Wikipedia community puts great stock in welcoming new editors. Guidance is available through a number of avenues, including help desks, a specific IRC channel, and an Adopt-a-User mentorship program”
7. Wikipedia vs EA Wiki
I have so far focused on the value of contributing to Wikipedia. However, the EA Forum earlier this year launched an EA Wiki, and it is natural to ask how contributions to it may compare. Prima facie, contributing to Wikipedia seems significantly more valuable since its articles receive considerably more traffic. But further reflection reveals a number of considerations in favour of contributing to the EA Wiki. Overall, I don’t feel that there are decisive reasons favouring one type of contribution over the other.
Notability. Many (most?) EA Wiki entries are important for the EA community but fail Wikipedia’s notability standards. This is often because their topics lack (enough) of what Wikipedia considers to be “reliable sources” (such as “academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks”). A decision to contribute to the EA Wiki is tacitly relying on the background judgment of the EA community, which has regarded that article as worthy of inclusion.
Friendliness. The EA Wiki is more welcoming, and for some people, this may make a big difference (e.g. chances of getting into nasty “edit wars” are probably at least 10x lower on the EA Wiki).
Building experience. The EA Wiki may be seen as a kind of “sandbox” for inexperienced editors, who could gain familiarity with the basics of wiki editing by contributing to this more welcoming encyclopedia before trying to submit content to Wikipedia.
Holistic effects. (might be the dominant consideration, besides notability) The value of contributing to the EA Wiki at this stage is probably coming less from the value of its individual articles and more from increasing the chances that the project as a whole succeeds.
Priority effects. (speculative) The value of early contributions is probably significantly higher since they set the future direction of the article and may last for longer than later contributions. Since the EA Wiki is so new, a much larger share of contributions to it than to Wikipedia will be early contributions.
There are also a few additional considerations in favour of Wikipedia (besides Wikipedia’s vastly greater readership):
Name recognition. Wikipedia is likely to be perceived by many to be a more authoritative source of information than the EA Wiki.
Neutrality. Compared to Wikipedia, the EA Wiki is more clearly associated with an intellectual movement. Insofar as this is the case, we should expect EA Wiki articles to be read more sceptically and, in turn, less likely to influence readers.
Haider, Jutta & Olof Sundin (2021) Wikipedia and wikis, in Mathieu O’Neil, Christian Pentzold & Sophie Toupin (eds.) The Handbook of Peer Production, Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 169–184.
Hinnosaar, Marit et al. (2017) Wikipedia matters, SSRN Electronic Journal.
[1] Paid Wikipedia editing is not banned outright. However, it seems to be widely regarded with suspicion, is subjected to additional scrutiny, and comes with extensive disclosure requirements. This is to avoid conflicts of interest and discourage Wikipedia editing being used for advocacy, propaganda, or recruitment. In light of this, improving Wikipedia articles is, comparatively, a much better opportunity for volunteers than for paid staff.
[2] Of course, writing is often motivated by aspects other than readership alone. For instance, writing magazine articles or books may be great opportunities for people to build their careers and public profiles.
[3] Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III & Mark A. McDaniel (2014) Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
[4] Tomasik (2013) highlights “differential intellectual progress” as a potentially important consideration in prioritising between different topics. He suggests that “we focus our Wikipedia contributions on topics that tend more to improve wisdom: social sciences, philosophy, other humanities, and some natural sciences (e.g., cosmology) that are extremely illuminating but not directly applicable to engineering.”
[5] One indicative (but admittedly imperfect) metric for the general success of the different Wikimedia projects is their Alexa rank (as listed here).
[6] Note that when your edits or your account are visibly connected to a specific community (like EA, arnimal rights, rationality, environmentalism etc.) it seems especially important to avoid recklessness and making a negative impression which may reflect badly on the community in general.
I am grateful to the following people for reviewing this article before publication: Pablo Stafforini, Aaron Gertler, Max Schons, Stefan Schubert, Sören Mindermann, and Matthew van der Merwe.
Wikipedia editing is important, tractable, and neglected
1. Key Takeaways
The case for Wikipedia editing in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles are widely read and trusted, there is much low hanging fruit for improvement, and editing Wikipedia has low barriers to entry and is relatively low effort. Consequently, improving a Wikipedia article may benefit the reasoning and actions of its thousands, and often millions, of readers. Moreover, since Wikipedia is a global public good, improvements to Wikipedia are likely undersupplied relative to the socially optimal level.
Careful prioritisation is crucial. Improving or creating some Wikipedia articles could easily be 100x to 1,000x as valuable as others. The key factors to consider for prioritisation are (i) pageviews, (ii) audience, (iii) topic, (iv) room for improvement, and (v) language.
Respecting Wikipedia community rules and norms is key. The Wikipedia community is wary of people making edits to promote a particular idea, person, or organisation, especially when there are relevant conflicts of interest. Consequently, edits that violate Wikipedia rules and norms may be actively harmful and are likely to be deleted. However, there are currently still very many genuine gaps in the quality and coverage of Wikipedia articles, and filling these gaps tends to work well and is regarded highly.
Contributing to or starting a WikiProject on an important topic may be valuable. A WikiProject is a group of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. A WikiProject allows for more efficient collaboration, by providing a centralised place where interested editors can make plans and discuss proposals.
There are self-interested reasons to edit Wikipedia. In particular, Wikipedia editing can be really fun, it is a great opportunity to learn more about a topic, it may help you improve your writing, and it may be a useful signal in some communities or for some professional opportunities.
Some EA-relevant content is better suited to a specialised EA Wiki than to Wikipedia. For instance, content that is too niche to meet Wikipedia’s notability requirements.
Please note that much of this post is not original, drawing on existing writing (see the “Relevant Resources” section). However, I felt it was important to add to, synthesise and popularise these ideas here on the forum. Any mistakes are my own.
2. Respecting Wikipedia Rules
Before giving the positive argument for Wikipedia editing, I want to stress the importance of becoming familiar with and respecting the rules and norms governing Wikipedia editing.
Lack of familiarity with the relevant rules and norms is one of the main reasons editors have their contributions reverted. The most important ones include:
Neutral point of view: “All Wikipedia articles (...) must be written from a neutral point of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias.”
Verifiability: “Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source.”
No original research: “Wikipedia does not publish original thought (...) Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources.”
Notability: “Article and list topics must be notable, or “worthy of notice”. (...) if no reliable, independent sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article.”
Conflict of interest (COI): “COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia about yourself, family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial and other relationships. (...) COI editing is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia.”
Paid-contribution disclosure: “If you are paid in any way for contributing to Wikipedia, disclose it. (...) those with a conflict of interest, including paid editors, are very strongly discouraged from directly editing affected articles”[1]
Most importantly, Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion:
In light of these rules, Tomasik (2013) notes:
Therefore, anyone considering making contributions to Wikipedia should become familiar with its rules, and in particular adhere to the requirement not to approach editing as an advocacy tool. This is important both because trying to paint an overly favourable picture of EA-related topics will, as Brian notes above, likely backfire, and because observing such a requirement is in line with EA’s commitment to intellectual honesty and moral cooperation. Wikipedia is one of the world’s greatest altruistic projects—their contributors share many of our core values, and we should respect their norms and efforts to maintain Wikipedia’s high quality.
3. Why You Should Consider Editing Wikipedia
Importance of Wikipedia Editing
Pageviews
Wikipedia articles tend to get very many pageviews. Wikipedia is the thirteenth most popular site on the web and “the printed encyclopedias of the past, although well‐known and much used, never came close to this level of general usage” (Haider and Sundin, 2021) . For the great majority of people, editing Wikipedia will get their writing (vastly) more readers than if they used the same time to write, for example, blog posts, social media posts, magazine articles, or books.[2]
Wikipedia articles perform very highly on search engines, frequently placing them at or near the top of search results. Consequently, Wikipedia pages for a given entity, such as a person or an organisation, often attract more pageviews than that entity’s official website.
A great tool to get an overview of how many people read Wikipedia articles is the Wikipedia pageviews tool. What follows are a few screenshots displaying the pageviews for a selection of articles relevant to EA. The tool clearly shows that (i) some of these articles get a very large number of pageviews, and (ii) some pages get orders of magnitude more traffic than others.
Pageviews of EA-related Wikipedia pages (link)
Pageviews of articles relevant to EA interests (link)
Credibility
People tend to trust what is written on Wikipedia. Therefore, as Tomasik (2013) states, “if you want to share factual information rather than an opinion, Wikipedia will not only bring it to more people but will do so more persuasively”.
For instance, this study concludes that “survey results indicate that people tend to find Wikipedia information to be fairly credible” (Flanagin & Metzger, 2011). And this (widely-cited though admittedly rather outdated) study found that “the accuracy of Wikipedia is high” and that the mean credibility score assigned by subject-matter experts to Wikipedia articles was around 3 on a scale from 1 (very credible) to 7 (very incredible) (Chesney, 2006). In addition, this 2014 survey found that the British public trusts Wikipedia contributors more than even the most trusted journalists.
Evidence of Real-World Impacts
There is some preliminary research that suggests Wikipedia articles have real-world impacts. Here are some examples of this kind of research:
A 2017 study found that “Incorporating ideas into Wikipedia leads to those ideas being used more in the scientific literature. (...) we find causal evidence that when scientific articles are added as references to Wikipedia, those articles accrue more academic citations.” (Thompson & Hanley, 2017)
Another 2017 study found that “information on Wikipedia has a sizable impact on consumption choices. Our estimates show that adding about 2,000 characters (approximately two paragraphs) of text and one photo to a city’s Wikipedia page increased the number of nights spent in this city by about 9% during the tourist season compared to cities in the control group.” (Hinnosaar et al., 2017)
A 2021 study notes that “by linking to external websites, Wikipedia can act as a gateway to the Web” and that “Wikipedia frequently serves as a stepping stone between search engines and third-party websites.” (Piccardi et al., 2021)
This preliminary research highlights the value not only of contributing to Wikipedia but also of conducting further research on the impact of such contributions.
Tractability of Wikipedia Editing
Low-Hanging Fruit
Many Wikipedia articles on important topics have substantial room for improvement. To name just a few of the key problems: articles are often incomplete, outdated, badly written or structured; they contain factual errors or lack relevant sources; or have not been translated to other (high priority) languages. Someone with relevant subject knowledge could often come in and substantially improve articles on the topics they know most about.
There seems to be a correlation between readership and article quality: More widely-read articles tend to be more complete and of higher quality. Consequently, in choosing which articles to edit, there usually is a trade-off between an article’s pageviews and the tractability of improving the article because more of the low-hanging fruit will already have been picked.
Low Barriers to Entry
It is very easy to begin editing Wikipedia for a few key reasons: First, the scope of Wikipedia edits can vary from tiny (e.g. correcting a typo), to medium (e.g. adding a new section to an existing article), to large (e.g. creating a new article). Second, Wikipedia editing is highly flexible: anyone can start editing anywhere, anytime, immediately (if they have internet access). Third, Wikipedia’s visual editing interface is so intuitive that it is essentially self-explanatory and is sufficient for most edits. Even learning to use Wikipedia’s source editing interface is relatively easy.
Editing Is Low Effort
Editing Wikipedia does not require (and actually does not permit) adding any original ideas or research. Fortunately, summarising existing research and insights is relatively low effort. For most people with subject-specific knowledge, it may be easy to contribute some of that knowledge to an appropriate Wikipedia article. For instance, as they write the literature review section for an academic paper, a graduate student may consider including a simplified summary of that review in a relevant Wikipedia article.
Neglectedness of Wikipedia Editing
Considering the potential importance and tractability of improving Wikipedia articles, Wikipedia editing is very neglected. In many (small) fields, only relatively few people (if any) tend to be active Wikipedia editors. Accordingly, a single person may be able to make a substantial difference to the quality of articles in their respective field or topic of interest.
It is not entirely surprising that Wikipedia editing is neglected: Wikipedia is a global public good (i.e. it is non-rivalrous, non-excludable, and available everywhere). Consequently, Wikipedia editing is likely undersupplied relative to the socially optimal level. A key reason for this is that the incentives to edit Wikipedia are insufficient: (i) there are no monetary rewards, (ii) editing is mostly anonymous, and (iii) in most (but not all) social contexts, you are likely to get less credit for Wikipedia editing than for more traditional activities (such as writing a book, blog posts, or insightful social media posts). This provides a great opportunity for altruistically-motivated people to close some of the gap between the demand for and the supply of high-quality Wikipedia articles.
Other Benefits of Wikipedia Editing
Enjoyment
Wikipedia editing can be highly rewarding. Many Wikipedia editors, including me (and Brian Tomasik), find the activity very enjoyable and motivating.
Potential Professional Value
Wikipedia user profiles are publicly visible and can be linked to a real person—for instance, by making your real name your user name or by adding relevant details about you to your Wikipedia user page. You could then add your Wikipedia profile to a CV or on LinkedIn. Depending on your profession, potential employers may be impressed by a good Wikipedia track record (this likely includes most EA organisations) .
Learning Value
Wikipedia editing can be a great way to learn more about a topic. Improving an article will often involve reading, understanding, and synthesising insights from secondary sources such as academic papers. There is extensive research showing that this kind of active engagement with the subject matter—as opposed to passive highlighting or copying of relevant passages from a book—improves understanding and aids retention.[3]
That said, it is usually better to focus on Wikipedia articles on topics you already know a fair amount about to reduce the risk of accidentally spreading incorrect information.
Improving Your Writing Style
Wikipedia follows a particular encyclopedic writing style. In line with this style, editing Wikipedia may help you to learn to write in a way that is concise, clear, and avoids unnecessary jargon or ambiguity. Moreover, it lets you practice good epistemic norms by forcing you to weigh different arguments and reference respectable sources. On the other hand, Wikipedia’s style makes it unsuited for practicing most non-encyclopedic writing, such as creative writing or promotional writing.
4. Prioritising Wikipedia Edits
Arguably, improving some Wikipedia articles is several orders of magnitude more valuable than improving others. For instance, article X may get 1,000x more pageviews than article Y, and X’s topic may be 10x more important than Y’s; all else being equal, it would be 10,000x more socially valuable to improve X than Y. Consequently, it is very important for altruists to prioritise carefully which Wikipedia articles to improve.
Some of the most important factors to prioritise between Wikipedia articles may be as follows:
Pageviews: More is better, all else being equal. As shown above, the differences in the number of pageviews can be enormous.
Audience: It matters not only how many people read an article but also who these people are. For instance, articles on certain niche topics in moral philosophy (e.g. population ethics) may be more likely to be read by a relatively more influential audience, such as students and researchers interested in global priorities research.
Topic: Some topics are more altruistically important than others. Even ignoring all other considerations, it is likely (much) more important to improve the article on Global catastrophic risk than the article on Toilet paper orientation.[4]
Room for improvement: Less complete and lower-quality articles are easier to improve since there is more low-hanging fruit left to pick. Relatedly, editing is easier when there are lots of reliable sources available whose insights can be integrated and referenced.
Language: It is usually more important to improve English-language Wikipedia articles than those in other languages. English-language articles tend to receive many more views than their counterparts in other languages, usually by one or two orders of magnitude (see below). Moreover, articles from the English Wikipedia often serve as templates for translations into other languages. This is typically done by editors proficient in the target language, but increasingly it involves the use of machine translation. (The second largest Wikipedia by number of articles is the Cebuano Wikipedia, with over 6 million articles. The vast majority of these articles were created by the automated program Lsjbot.) However, English-language Wikipedia articles tend to be more complete and higher-quality, meaning there may be less low-hanging fruit left to pick.
For illustration, the following tables display the number of pageviews for the top 10 language versions of several EA-related Wikipedia articles.
Effective altruism (link)
Peter Singer (link)
Global catastrophic risk (link)
Translating Articles
An alternative to improving English Wikipedia articles is to translate these articles into other languages. When translating articles, it is important to adhere to the Wikipedia translation guidelines. Moreover, please note that community norms and rules may differ (slightly) between different language Wikipedias (e.g. what is regarded as “notable” enough to justify an article on the topic).
Here are some pros and cons from Tomasik (2013) for translating compared against contributing new content to the English article:
Creating New Articles vs Editing Existing Articles
There is no general rule to decide whether it is more valuable to create new Wikipedia articles or improve existing ones. One advantage of the latter is that you can already see how popular the article is (in terms of pageviews) to inform your judgment of the value of improving that article. In contrast, when deciding whether to create a new article, you will have much less information about the article’s potential popularity.
Editing Other Wikimedia Projects
Wikipedia is only one among several projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. These other projects function analagously to Wikipedia (i.e. anyone can edit articles/items) and include, amongst others:
Wikimedia Commons: a repository of images, sounds, videos, and general media
Wikidata: a knowledge base for centrally storing the structured data of other Wikimedia projects
Wikiquote: a collection of quotations
Wikisource: a digital library of free-content textual sources
Wikibooks: a collection of textbooks
Wiktionary: an online dictionary and thesaurus
Wikivoyage: a travel guide
This raises the question of whether to prioritise contributing to Wikipedia or a different Wikimedia project. Overall, Wikipedia seems by far the most important and popular (in terms of pageviews) of these projects.[5] That is, it will usually be (much) more valuable to improve a Wikipedia article on a given topic than, for instance, the equivalent Wikiquote article. On the other hand, there may be more low hanging fruit left to pick in other Wikimedia projects.
Note that Wikipedia articles directly integrate much of the content hosted on Wikimedia Commons. Thus, it can be very valuable to create and upload relevant media (e.g. graphs and illustrations) to Wikimedia Commons (while following the copyright rules) and then include them in a suitable Wikipedia article.
5. WikiProjects of Special Relevance to EA
A WikiProject is a group of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia has about 2,000 WikiProjects, about half of which are active. A WikiProject allows for more efficient collaboration by providing a centralised place where interested editors can make plans and discuss proposals.
There is currently no WikiProject on effective altruism. However, some WikiProjects have within their scope topics of EA relevance (HT Rob Bensinger), including:
Animal rights
Disaster management
Philosophy/Ethics
Future studies
International development
A list of all existing WikiProjects, with activity status and creation dates, can be found here.
You may want to become involved in one or more of these existing projects, depending on your interests and personal fit. More ambitiously, you may also want to consider starting a new WikiProject (for instance, one on effective altruism). Here is what Wikipedia says about the process for creating a new WikiProject:
It appears that there was an early proposal to create a WikiProject on EA, which was rejected. However, this proposal was made back in 2013 by a single user with just four edits, so it doesn’t seem like it should count as a negative precedent.
6. Getting Started as a Wikipedia Editor
You have decided to give Wikipedia editing a go. Great! Where do you get started? Fortunately, Wikipedia has a guide for that: Wikipedia: Getting started.
Becoming Familiar With Wikipedia’s Rules
Don’t feel like you need to have read all articles about Wikipedia rules and norms before you can start to edit. While reading them upfront may help you avoid some frustrating experiences later, the biggest failure mode is getting overwhelmed and being discouraged from ever taking the first step on your editing journey. Most of Wikipedia’s rules and norms are commonsensical, and you are bound to become familiar with them as you gather editing experience.
That said, if you read only a single article before you started editing, I would recommend Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia. Below is a list of the ten rules from the article, including some highlights, but I recommend reading the original.
Register an Account
“By logging in you can build a record of good edits, and it is easier to communicate and collaborate with others if you have a fixed, reputable identity. Finally, registering an account provides access to enhanced editing features, including a “watchlist” for monitoring articles you have edited previously.”
Learn the Five Pillars
Wikipedia “is not an appropriate venue to promote your pet theory or share unpublished results. It is also not a soapbox on which to expound your personal theories or a battleground to debate controversial issues.”
Be Bold, but Not Reckless
“Many new editors feel intimidated about contributing to Wikipedia at first, fearing they may a mistake. Such reticence is understandable but unfounded. The worst that can happen is your first edits are deemed not to be an improvement and they get reverted. If this does occur, treat it as a positive learning experience and ask the reverting editor for advice.”[6]
Know Your Audience
“Wikipedia is not primarily aimed at experts; therefore, the level of technical detail in its articles must be balanced against the ability of non-experts to understand those details.”
Do Not Infringe Copyright
“With certain conditions, almost all of Wikipedia’s content is free for anyone to reuse, adapt, and distribute. Consequently, it does not accept non-free material under copyright restriction.”
Cite, Cite, Cite
“Wikipedia has a strict inclusion policy that demands verifiability. This is best established by attributing each statement in Wikipedia to a reliable, published source.”
Avoid Self-Promotion
“Think twice, also, before writing about your mentors, colleagues, competitors, inventions, or projects. Doing so places you in a conflict of interest and inclines you towards unintentional bias.”
Share Your Expertise, but Don’t Argue from Authority
“Writing about a subject about which you have academic expertise is not a conflict of interest; indeed, this is where we can contribute to Wikipedia most effectively.”
Write Neutrally and with Due Weight
“All articles in Wikipedia should be impartial in tone and content. When writing, do state facts and facts about notable opinions, but do not offer your opinion as fact.”
Ask for Help
“Wikipedia can be a confusing place for the inexperienced editor. (...) Thankfully, the Wikipedia community puts great stock in welcoming new editors. Guidance is available through a number of avenues, including help desks, a specific IRC channel, and an Adopt-a-User mentorship program”
7. Wikipedia vs EA Wiki
I have so far focused on the value of contributing to Wikipedia. However, the EA Forum earlier this year launched an EA Wiki, and it is natural to ask how contributions to it may compare. Prima facie, contributing to Wikipedia seems significantly more valuable since its articles receive considerably more traffic. But further reflection reveals a number of considerations in favour of contributing to the EA Wiki. Overall, I don’t feel that there are decisive reasons favouring one type of contribution over the other.
Notability. Many (most?) EA Wiki entries are important for the EA community but fail Wikipedia’s notability standards. This is often because their topics lack (enough) of what Wikipedia considers to be “reliable sources” (such as “academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks”). A decision to contribute to the EA Wiki is tacitly relying on the background judgment of the EA community, which has regarded that article as worthy of inclusion.
Friendliness. The EA Wiki is more welcoming, and for some people, this may make a big difference (e.g. chances of getting into nasty “edit wars” are probably at least 10x lower on the EA Wiki).
Building experience. The EA Wiki may be seen as a kind of “sandbox” for inexperienced editors, who could gain familiarity with the basics of wiki editing by contributing to this more welcoming encyclopedia before trying to submit content to Wikipedia.
Holistic effects. (might be the dominant consideration, besides notability) The value of contributing to the EA Wiki at this stage is probably coming less from the value of its individual articles and more from increasing the chances that the project as a whole succeeds.
Priority effects. (speculative) The value of early contributions is probably significantly higher since they set the future direction of the article and may last for longer than later contributions. Since the EA Wiki is so new, a much larger share of contributions to it than to Wikipedia will be early contributions.
There are also a few additional considerations in favour of Wikipedia (besides Wikipedia’s vastly greater readership):
Name recognition. Wikipedia is likely to be perceived by many to be a more authoritative source of information than the EA Wiki.
Neutrality. Compared to Wikipedia, the EA Wiki is more clearly associated with an intellectual movement. Insofar as this is the case, we should expect EA Wiki articles to be read more sceptically and, in turn, less likely to influence readers.
8. Relevant Resources
Essays
Branwen, Gwern (2009) In defense of inclusionism, Gwern.Net, January 15.
Branwen, Gwern (2009) Wikipedia and other wikis, Gwern.Net, January 27.
Bush, Lance S. (2013) Low-hanging fruit: Improving Wikipedia entries, LessWrong, July 23.
Naik, Vipul (2015) Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation?, Effective Altruism Forum, March 28.
Tomasik, Brian (2009) Save notes to Wikipedia, Reducing Suffering, April 17.
Tomasik, Brian (2013) The value of Wikipedia contributions in social sciences, Essays on Reducing Suffering, November 26.
Academic articles
Chesney, Thomas (2006) An empirical examination of Wikipedia’s credibility, First Monday, vol. 11.
Haider, Jutta & Olof Sundin (2021) Wikipedia and wikis, in Mathieu O’Neil, Christian Pentzold & Sophie Toupin (eds.) The Handbook of Peer Production, Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 169–184.
Hinnosaar, Marit et al. (2017) Wikipedia matters, SSRN Electronic Journal.
Jemielniak, Dariusz & Eduard Aibar (2016) Bridging the gap between wikipedia and academia, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, vol. 67, pp. 1773–1776.
Piccardi, Tiziano et al. (2021) On the value of Wikipedia as a gateway to the web, ArXiv Preprint ArXiv:2102.07385, vol. 2.
Shafee, Thomas, Daniel Mietchen & Andrew I. Su (2017) Academics can help shape Wikipedia, Science, vol. 357, pp. 557–558.
Thompson, Neil & Douglas Hanley (2017) Science is shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence from a randomized control trial, SSRN Electronic Journal.
Xu, Sean Xin & Xiaoquan Zhang (2013) Impact of Wikipedia on market information environment: Evidence on management disclosure and investor reaction, MIS Quarterly, vol. 37, pp. 1043–1068.
Footnotes
[1] Paid Wikipedia editing is not banned outright. However, it seems to be widely regarded with suspicion, is subjected to additional scrutiny, and comes with extensive disclosure requirements. This is to avoid conflicts of interest and discourage Wikipedia editing being used for advocacy, propaganda, or recruitment. In light of this, improving Wikipedia articles is, comparatively, a much better opportunity for volunteers than for paid staff.
[2] Of course, writing is often motivated by aspects other than readership alone. For instance, writing magazine articles or books may be great opportunities for people to build their careers and public profiles.
[3] Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III & Mark A. McDaniel (2014) Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
[4] Tomasik (2013) highlights “differential intellectual progress” as a potentially important consideration in prioritising between different topics. He suggests that “we focus our Wikipedia contributions on topics that tend more to improve wisdom: social sciences, philosophy, other humanities, and some natural sciences (e.g., cosmology) that are extremely illuminating but not directly applicable to engineering.”
[5] One indicative (but admittedly imperfect) metric for the general success of the different Wikimedia projects is their Alexa rank (as listed here).
[6] Note that when your edits or your account are visibly connected to a specific community (like EA, arnimal rights, rationality, environmentalism etc.) it seems especially important to avoid recklessness and making a negative impression which may reflect badly on the community in general.
I am grateful to the following people for reviewing this article before publication: Pablo Stafforini, Aaron Gertler, Max Schons, Stefan Schubert, Sören Mindermann, and Matthew van der Merwe.