Among its steps, Gardner said the nonprofit is expanding a program that encourages university professors to assign the writing of Wikipedia entries to their students, particularly in India, Brazil, Canada, Germany and Britain.
The website has also introduced a new feature called WikiLove aimed at keeping users engaged. Visitors to the website select a graphic icon–choices include kittens, stars and the Mediterranean dessert baklava–and send it with a message of appreciation to a page contributor as encouragement. “It’s like a ‘like’ on Facebook,” Wales said.
The seventh annual Wikipedia conference, hosted this year in Israel, was attended by some 650 Wikipedia contributors and enthusiasts from 56 countries. Two contributors attended from Venezuela and Indonesia, though neither country has diplomatic relations with Israel. A Palestinian from the West Bank also attended, with Israeli military permission.
Wikipedia’s leaders assured the audience that the website’s reputation is strong–no longer drawing the ire of teachers and journalists claiming that its entries are unreliable.
“Making fun of Wikipedia is so 2007,” Gardner said to a cheering crowd, quoting what a French journalist recently told her.
Even so, Wales said Wikipedia must be used with care.
“Particularly be careful if we say ‘the neutrality of this article is disputed,’ or ‘the following section doesn’t cite any sources.’ That’s probably a good warning,” he said.
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