Wikipedia's response to the COVID-19 pandemic
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The
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
was covered in
Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
extensively, in real-time, and across multiple languages. This coverage extends to many detailed articles about various aspects of the topic itself, as well as many existing articles being amended to take account of the pandemic's effect on them. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects' coverage of the pandemic – and how the volunteer editing community achieved that coverage – received widespread media attention for its comprehensiveness, reliability, and speed. Wikipedia experienced an increase in readership during the pandemic.


Wikipedia

The
Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...
reported that on all Wikipedias from 1 December 2019 to 8 December 2020, 6,950 articles related to
COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...
had been created, and 983,395 edits had been made to COVID-19-related articles by 97,088 editors. Additionally, in the same one-year time frame, COVID-19 related articles across all Wikipedias received 579,190,316 pageviews. One study found that Wikipedia's coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic from January to May 2020 referenced trusted media sources and high-quality academic research. Another study observed that Wikipedia's traffic tended to match the intensity of other COVID-19 discussion in the media ecosystem, rather than the ongoing and steady severity of the pandemic. A December 2020 study showed that nearly two percent of COVID-19-related literature had been cited on Wikipedia. In mid-March 2020, journalist
Noam Cohen Noam Cohen is an American journalist. He was a technology columnist and author of the "Link by Link" column for ''The New York Times'' from 2007 to 2013. He is the author of the 2017 nonfiction book ''The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley ...
said that editors' work on articles related to the pandemic demonstrated "that Wikipedia has also developed a conscience." Cohen described how Wikipedia's efforts to combat misinformation related to the pandemic differed from some other major websites and opined, "Unless
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
,
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
and the others can learn to address misinformation more effectively, Wikipedia will remain the last best place on the Internet." Wikipedia experienced an increase in readership during the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, according to the newspaper ''
Dawn Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the appearance of indirect sunlight being scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc has reached 18° below the observer's hori ...
'', when reports of cases in
Wuhan Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei Province in the People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the ninth-most populous Chinese city an ...
emerged in December 2019 at the start of the pandemic, Wikipedia editors averaged 163 edits per hour to COVID-related pages. Across 188 Wikipedia languages, there were nearly 7,000 articles related to the pandemic as of November 2021.In his article "Why Wikipedia Is Immune to Coronavirus", Omer Benjakob of '' Haaretz'' wrote, "Wikipedia has stepped in to provide relief. So much so that it has become the go-to source for COVID-19 information." Editors have worked diligently to remove
misinformation Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. It differs from disinformation, which is ''deliberately'' deceptive. Rumors are information not attributed to any particular source, and so are unreliable and often unverified, but can turn ...
. The
World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of ...
announced it was working with the
Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...
to help freely license its infographics and other material on COVID-19 to help in the work's effort to fight misinformation related to COVID-19, with plans to do similar in the future for other infectious diseases. Jevin West, a professor at the
University of Washington Information School The Information School (or iSchool) at the University of Washington is an undergraduate and graduate school that offers BS, MLIS, MS, and PhD degrees. Formerly the Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences (GSLIS), the Information Sc ...
, said in August 2020 that Wikipedia has handled COVID-19 "overall, exceptionally well." In January 2021, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
remarked that in 2020, hundreds of Wikipedia editors had covered just about every aspect of the pandemic. In June 2021, Jackson Ryan of CNET reported on Wikipedia's "endless war" over the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis. Some editors were reported to have been caught setting up "
sock puppet A sock puppet or sockpuppet is a puppet made from a sock or a similar garment. The puppeteer wears the sock on a hand and lower arm as if it were a glove, with the puppet's mouth being formed by the region between the sock's heel and toe, and ...
" accounts to reinforce their own point of view and push dubious sources. Other editors were reported to have expressed concerns about possible Chinese state actors suppressing discussion of the hypothesis, without providing definitive evidence. In July 2021, British science writer
Matt Ridley Matthew White Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley, (born 7 February 1958), is a British science writer, journalist and businessman. He is known for his writings on science, the environment, and economics and has been a regular contributor to ''Th ...
criticized Wikipedia for "long bann ngany mention of the possibility that the virus leaked from a Wuhan laboratory." Ridley himself is a proponent of the lab leak hypothesis. In a July 2021 ''
The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'' article, writer
Renée DiResta Renée DiResta is a writer and research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). DiResta has written about pseudoscience, conspiracies, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare. She has also served as in advisor to the U.S. Congres ...
wrote about how the
United States government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...
's efforts to combat misinformation needed a "better system for communicating with the public." DiResta refers to Wikipedia as a good model for how this should be done, stating that "The crowdsourced reference site is the simplest, most succinct summary of the current state of knowledge on almost any subject you can imagine," and that this approach would allow "far more complete and up-to-date nformationthan individual press releases." In August 2021, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales wrote in ''
Al Jazeera Al Jazeera ( ar, الجزيرة, translit-std=DIN, translit=al-jazīrah, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazeera ...
'' that "When the COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we know it, volunteer editors on Wikipedia acted in real-time to combat disinformation and ensure the world had access to science-based health resources, across 188 languages and every continent. Through an open, decentralised model, Wikipedians created unparalleled amounts of accurate, life-saving content." Wikipedia editors follow a set of " contentious topics" standards to prevent misinformation and
vandalism Vandalism is the action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property. The term includes property damage, such as graffiti and defacement directed towards any property without permission of the owner. The term ...
. These topics encompass all "specially-designated topics that have attracted more persistent disruptive editing than the rest of the project". The contentious topic rules state that administrators have the ability to restrict editors causing disruption or to restrict entire pages if there's constant disruption.


English Wikipedia

A year after its first creation, the main
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
Wikipedia article in English had become the 34th most viewed article on the website of all time, with almost 32,000 inbound links from other articles, according to ''
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hu ...
''. Wikipedia's Top 100 most-viewed pages chart lists the article for the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
as the 65th most-viewed article ever and the article for Coronavirus as the 5th most-viewed
life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...
-related article ever. The "2019–2020 China pneumonia outbreak" Wikipedia article, which evolved into the
English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of , has the most arti ...
's main article about the pandemic, was created on 5 January 2020 by a user from China. Wikipedia entries were subsequently created for " Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2" and " Coronavirus disease 2019". By 9 February, the main article had been edited more than 6,500 times by approximately 1,200 editors, and six of the primary Wikipedia articles about the pandemic were viewed more than 18 million times. Other early entries included an overview of the pandemic by country and territory, a
timeline A timeline is a display of a list of events in chronological order. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates paralleling it, and usually contemporaneous events. Timelines can use any suitable scale represen ...
, and another focused on xenophobia and racism. The Wikipedia pages about
bats as food Bats are eaten by people in parts of some Asian, African, Pacific Rim countries and cultures, including China, Vietnam, Seychelles, the Philippines, Indonesia, Palau, Thailand, and Guam. Half the megabat (fruit bat) species are hunted for food b ...
, the Corona beer brand,
severe acute respiratory syndrome Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), the first identified strain of the SARS coronavirus species, ''sev ...
(SARS), and
Wuhan Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei Province in the People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the ninth-most populous Chinese city an ...
also saw increased editing. As the pandemic spread, editors worked to keep up with the barrage of new information and misinformation being added to the site. Information on Wikipedia was used to create data visualizations and shared on
Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...
,
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
, and other social media platforms. More than 2,100 editors had contributed to the main article about the pandemic by 19 March. Editor affinity groups known as
WikiProject A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiq ...
s helped to supervise the English Wikipedia's pandemic coverage, monitoring articles for changes, offering feedback, enforcing rigorous source quality standards, and translating articles into Wikipedias of other languages. A new WikiProject dedicated to the disease and pandemic had 90 members by late March 2020. Prominent Wikipedia editors involved in these projects included
James Heilman James M. Heilman (born ) is a Canadian emergency physician, Wikipedian, and advocate for the improvement of Wikipedia's health-related content. He encourages other clinicians to contribute to the online encyclopedia. With the Wikipedia user ...
and Jason Moore. Wikipedia editors deleted and later restored an entry called "
2020 Tablighi Jamaat COVID-19 hotspot in Delhi A Tablighi Jamaat religious congregation that took place in Delhi's Nizamuddin Markaz Mosque in early March 2020 was a COVID-19 super-spreader event, with more than 4,000 confirmed cases and at least 27 deaths linked to the event reported ac ...
", which project co-founder Jimmy Wales said "was incredibly poorly written and had zero sources". ''
Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...
'' Omer Benjakob reports that prior to deletion, the article contained
Islamophobic Islamophobia is the fear of, hatred of, or prejudice against the religion of Islam or Muslims in general, especially when seen as a geopolitical force or a source of terrorism. The scope and precise definition of the term ''Islamophobia'' ...
claims that the local Muslim community was the cause of the spread of the disease in India, along with claims that Muslims at a local medical center were seen " molesting nurses and spitting on hospital staff ... nd evenreportedly found
defecating Defecation (or defaecation) follows digestion, and is a necessary process by which organisms eliminate a solid, semisolid, or liquid waste material known as feces from the digestive tract via the anus. The act has a variety of names ranging f ...
in the hospital corridor". Wales later responded to accusations on Twitter stating that Wikipedia did not accept payment for the article's deletion.Readership spikes have reflected significant developments in the disease's spread. "
COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan The COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan is part of the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The virus was confirmed to have reached Pakistan on 26 February 2020, when two ...
" saw a traffic spike in late March, with daily page views ranging from 80,000 to 100,000; the article ranked number 72 for the month's most read pages. In early April, Wikimedia projects received 673 million page views in a 24-hour period, the highest in five years. The English Wikipedia had 283 COVID-19 articles by then, with the main entry receiving more than 17,000 edits and 20 million views. Entries about the pandemic received 240 million views by 23 April 2020, with the page about misinformation related to the pandemic receiving an average of 14,000 views per day. A November 2021 study found that contributions to the English Wikipedia had increased by 20 percent due to COVID-19 restrictions.


German Wikipedia

There are hundreds of Wikipedia articles about the COVID-19 pandemic at German Wikipedia. Editors began writing about the pandemic in January 2020, when the outbreak was advancing in China. The main article about the pandemic and the entry for the disease's spread in Germany were being accessed approximately 150,000 and 100,000 times per day, respectively, as of March 2020.


Indian languages

Wikipedia had COVID-19 information in several Indian languages by 27 March 2020, including Bangla, Bhojpuri, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. SWASTHA (acronym for Special Wikipedia Awareness Scheme for the Healthcare Affiliates), a division of
WikiProject Medicine A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiq ...
, is working with
Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
, India's
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is an Indian government ministry charged with health policy in India. It is also responsible for all government programs relating to family planning in India. The Minister of Health and Family Welfare ...
and National Health Authority, and the World Health Organization to improve coverage.
Urdu Wikipedia Urdu Wikipedia ( ur, ), started in January 2004, is the Urdu language edition of Wikipedia, a free, open-content encyclopedia. As of , it has articles, registered users and files, and it is the largest edition of Wikipedia by article co ...
's entry for COVID-19 was viewed more than 12,000 times by 23 April 2020. The Odia Wikipedia's average monthly readership rose from about 800,000 before 2021 to two million afterwards. A representative from the Wikimedia Odia division said that the over 1,900 medical articles made the Odia Wikipedia "the most comprehensive source of medical content in Odia on the internet". Development of Wikipedia's coverage on COVID-19 led to public consideration among Indian people of Wikipedia's coverage of other topics.


Italian Wikipedia

A study found that during the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
users in Italy had increased readership on topics related to dieting.


Japanese Wikipedia

There are over one hundred Wikipedia articles about the pandemic at the
Japanese Wikipedia The is the Japanese-language edition of Wikipedia, a free, open-source online encyclopedia. Started on 11 May 2001, the edition attained the 200,000 article mark in April 2006 and the 500,000 article mark in June 2008. As of , it has over ar ...
. The Wikipedia article "Abenomask" ( アベノマスク) drew attention due to its deletion request. The word refers to a government plan involving reusable clothmasks. Some said that the name was an insult against
Shinzo Abe Shinzo Abe ( ; ja, 安倍 晋三, Hepburn: , ; 21 September 1954 – 8 July 2022) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 20 ...
, while others said that it was not an insult and showed usage in ''
Sankei Shimbun The (short for ) is a daily newspaper in Japan published by the It has the seventh-highest circulation for regional newspapers in Japan. Among Japanese newspapers, the circulation is second only to ''Yomiuri Shimbun'', Seikyo Shimbun, ''Asa ...
'', a
conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
newspaper. The community decided that it should not be deleted.


Spanish Wikipedia

The main article about the pandemic at
Spanish Wikipedia The Spanish Wikipedia ( es, Wikipedia en español) is a Spanish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia. It has articles. Started in May 2001, it reached 100,000 articles on March 8, 2006 and 1,000,000 articles on May 16, 2013 ...
was created by an editor from Costa Rica on 19 January 2020. By mid April, the article had been edited more than 5,000 times, included 350 references, and received more than 5 million views. The entry was being monitored by approximately 175 editors at the time, receiving an average of 80,000 views per day.


Wikidata

Wikidata Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a common source of open data that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and anyone else, can use under the CC0 public domain license ...
, a knowledge database and sibling project of Wikipedia, has been used for COVID-19 research and databasing. BridgeDb, a project that connects bioinformatic identifiers, is creating COVID-19 gene and protein mapping databases from information supplied by
Wikidata Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a common source of open data that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and anyone else, can use under the CC0 public domain license ...
as part of a collaboration with Wikidata's WikiProject COVID-19.
Peer-review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...
journal '' Semantic Web'' wrote about using Wikidata as a semantic resource for COVID-19, writing, "The rich knowledge graph created for COVID-19 in Wikidata can be visualized, explored, and analyzed for purposes like decision support as well as educational and scholarly research." WikiProject India set up a task force on Wikidata and created a central database depicting the national and state-level trajectories of the spread.


Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that supports
Wikimedia movement According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects. This community directly builds and administers the projects. It is committed to using open standards and software. ...
projects, including Wikipedia, had employees work remotely during lockdowns. The foundation published multiple free resources for at-home learning to assist with school closures. The foundation's then-executive director,
Katherine Maher Katherine Roberts Maher (; born April 18, 1983) is a former chief executive officer and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Maher worked for UNICEF, the National Democratic Institu ...
, has encouraged editors and readers to work together to improve Wikipedia's coverage of COVID-19.


Wikimedian of the Year

The Wikimedia Foundation's annual
Wikimedian of the Year The Wikimedian of the Year is an annual award that honors Wikipedia editors and other contributors to Wikimedia projects to highlight major achievements within the Wikimedia movement, established in August 2011 by Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy ...
award winners in 2020 and 2021 were attributed for their contribution to COVID-19-related content. The 2020 winner, Sandister Tei under the username Sandiooses, received the award for helping "pioneer the development of our volunteer communities in sub-Saharan Africa". The press release from the foundation details Tei's efforts to keep her User Group connected and contributing to articles about the pandemic's impact in Ghana. The 2021 winner, Alaa Najjar under the username علاء, received the award for " issignificant contributions to
Arabic Wikipedia The Arabic Wikipedia ( ar, ويكيبيديا العربية) is the Modern Standard Arabic version of Wikipedia. It started on 9 July 2003. As of , it has articles, registered users and files and it is the largest edition of Wikipedia by ...
represent a care and a commitment to neutrality and accuracy that have encouraged a high standard of quality information on Wikipedia". The foundation's press release highlights his leadership on the creation of COVID-19-related articles on the Arabic Wikipedia, contributing majorly to WikiProject Medicine and "providing critical access to life-saving information in his community and around the world."


See also

*
Health information on Wikipedia The Wikipedia online encyclopedia has, since the late 2000s, served as a popular source for health information for both laypersons and, in many cases, health care practitioners. Health-related articles on Wikipedia are popularly accessed as resu ...


References


Further reading

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External links


Wikipedia and COVID-19 – Explore the data
Wikimedia Foundation {{DEFAULTSORT:Wikipedia's response to the coronavirus pandemic Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic Wikipedia coverage of specific events