Wikis for publishing scholarly articles on data science and software

February 21, 2019 - Reading time: 4 minutes

By now you may already know that to add scholarly articles to the English version of Wikipedia is difficult due to the "notability" concept and tight control from anonymous editors (see this article). In recent years, entire Wikipedia topics and articles dedicated to software and data science have been wiped out by a few nameless characters without clearly-indicated scientific credentials. Their user pages are usually empty, and their login names tell nothing. That"s right - the "notability" of articles on Wikipedia is enforced by unnotable editors. This casts significant doubts on their ability to make correct decisions, and on the entire notability concept of wiki-style resources.

Biases in decisions for accepting new articles are quite common for Wikipedia. To avoid this problem, Wikipedia articles are posted through the consensus of many editors. However, for scientific and software topics, it is not uncommon when such discussions go between the author and, typically, a single anonymous (and often authoritarian) editor without professional credentials. Yes, the best times of Wikipedia are gone,  and most articles have been written. Many editors for specialized topics have left Wikipedia, and the remaining editors are just "cleansing" it, protecting it from new information (a safer choice when the "talk" page is empty), and rearranging the entries in an attempt to make "trustful" encyclopedia. A naive move from the start - scholarly articles written by a few anonymous persons will never be reliable and objective source of information. These editors may also have their own agenda (and even financial interests) for cancelling your article on Wikipedia.

You cannot change the Wikipeda policy, nor the authoritarian personality of unnamed editors. However, one can overcome this problem by using alternative Wiki-style resources as discussed in this article. If your article cannot be inserted into Wikipedia, consider Everipedia, Scolapedia, EduTechWiki  and other similar resources.

Finally, HandWiki became publicly open (a week ago!) and started to accept articles on data science and software. For example, you can look at this list of articles related to data science:

• List of numerical-analysis software  and  comparison of analysis software;
• List of statistical packages and comparison of statistical packages;
• Free statistical software.

Unlike Wikipedia, these articles can contain more comprehensive information since they discuss programs that are not limited to existing Wikipedia entries. You are free to add new entries to these listings even without existing Wikipedia articles: You only need to give an external reference to the program you want to add, i.e. to Everipedia, HandWiki article (both are more permissive for new content than Wikipedia), or to other external web resources. Here are examples showing how to reference a software package "MyProgram" on HandWiki:

• [[MyProgram]] - reference to the HandWiki existing article
• <wipe>MyProgram</wipe> - reference to the Wikipedia article
• <wp>MyProgram</wp> - reference to the Everipedia article
• [[https://www/MyProgram MyProgram]] - reference the external URL link

If your article is rejected on Wikipedia and, therefore, cannot be listed on any Wikipedia page, bring this article to HandWiki (using the MediaWiki syntax!). In addition, one can also add tutorials and manuals on software programs, which cannot be done for Wikipedia/Everipedia. The minimum requirement to open HandWiki account is to indicate your scholarly background during registration.

R.Riviera