Talk:Science Wiki User Group

A User group for STEM or Science Wikimedians

Note:Discussion initiated at en.wikipedia wikiproject biology

Problem

There are many disparate communities of scientists across Wikimedia projects. This fractured landscape can hinder communication, collaboration, and networking. There are also many great projects and collaborations being done, but often it is hard to come across them. At least in English Wikipedia, the sciences split across dozens of WikiProjects in the early days, in expectation of larger editor numbers.

Proposal

A User Group that can foster communication, collaboration, and networking:

1. cross-wiki (wikipedia, commons, wikidata, wikisource etc)
2. cross-language (en, de, it etc)
3. cross-subject (biology, physics, chemistry, maths etc)
4. global (as opposed to location-based groups)

The STEM community across wikimedia shares a lot of the same challenges and opportunities. Many of the ideas and initiatives in one area could be expanded or adapted to others. The medical community has a unified presence via the Wiki Project Med Foundation. Similarly so do classics, libraries, education. A STEM or Science equivalent could do something similar

Some questions

What are people's overall impressions? What is the ideal breadth of scope (STEM, science, other)? What would be needed to maximise success? What other User Groups would be good models? T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:41, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

The MEd group could be a good model too, but at the same time there will be some difference.--Alexmar983 (talk) 01:43, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the medical wiki community seems to have found a sweet spot, and we should try to learn from that. I could see merit in both having a narrow focus like science (enwiki entry) and in going for a broader one like STEM (enwiki) or broader yet, closer to the notion of Wissenschaft in German (for which enwiki has a separate article), which encompasses all fields of systematic enquiry (i.e. including classics, medicine, economics etc.) as well as the corresponding institutions. If we go for the broader scope, we should use a broader term to describe it. In English, scholar, research or academic are all broader in this sense, but they come with additional notions (e.g. the expectation of affiliation with some academic or research institution), so we should also consider using a term like Wissenschaft or its similarly broad equivalents in other Eurasian languages — think nauka (pl and several other Slavic languages), alim (ar and other Middle Eastern languages) or simply things like sayansi (Swahili), which would add an international notion (which I have also added above as global in the listing of the User Group's dimensions). -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 09:58, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Logo

One of the reason I did not rush in creating this page was the logo. It is used for the International Wikipedia Scientific Conference, something that I could not really grasp when I discovered it. I had the feeling it was much more informaticians than scientists... so just in case I wanted to be sure not to use their logo untill we discussed about it and we understood what the IWSC is. Still, we need more options in general. it's a fitting logo but it's not something we should use directly like this. I had some ideas but as i told you, it's not the best season.--Alexmar983 (talk) 01:40, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

@Alexmar983: good point. A logo can be sorted out through discussion as the idea progresses. (for record, the logo mentioned above is File:Wiki_science_conference.svg). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:43, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes I have some idea and the discussion of the logo on WikiClassics is an example. It takes 2 months when you do it properly. Plus, UG require a logo ready for their application so we should be really sure about it. Handle with care. You can start to make a gallery of useful svg files you would like to use.--Alexmar983 (talk) 01:50, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

I'd like to propose taking the Voyager Golden Record as a starting point for inspiration and discussion, perhaps together with the Nebra Sky disc (which is as much science/ STEM as it is Classics). -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 09:58, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Scope--Which sciences (and also scientific topic) should be included?

Looking at the table you have included, I see what I would consider 'natural' sciences only. My university has a College of Natural and Applied Sciences (CNAS) which includes those groups but excludes humanistic or 'soft' sciences like sociology, psychology, and economics. Many universities do that and I think that such a division would be fine. However, your current draft excludes applied sciences as well--agriculture, engineering, and so on. Take a look at this list on enwiki for a list of applied sciences--do any of these belong? If any, I'd imagine we would include WP:Engineering.

We also have an earth sciences department within CNAS. I think that WP:Geology should absolutely be added, and perhaps WP:Geography as well. Geology is especially important because it actually takes into account regional differences. I am not entirely decided on the latter but I would class GIS and even remote sensing under geography. However, geography projects likely get treated in every language as 'map-stuff,' so perhaps we should hold off on that one.

WP:Astronomy might be classed under Physics, but I would not be surprised if it is common across several languages. It probably deserves its own category.

Finally, I would consider adding WP:History of science and WP:Academic Journals, and perhaps WP:Science. It might be good to know if each language has a hub project to coordinate and represent their entire wiki. A bit daunting, but I think it would make coordination much easier. Prometheus720 (talk) 02:44, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree that a broad STEM scope (including Maths, Engineering, HoS). Having thought about it, I actually think a name like 'Science Wiki User Group' works better than 'STEM Wiki User Group', since the STEM acronym is much harder to translate and is less commonly understood than 'Science'. I've moved the page for now, but we can definitely move it back, or to something different as discussion progresses. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:30, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

I should think you're right about the translatability of 'Science' above 'STEM'. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:41, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Scope--Which languages need to be on the table initially, and which do we prioritize?

Based solely on what I understand about academic publishing, the list you placed on the table looks perfect. Those seem like the big publishing languages. I would consider adding French, though.

I think that these languages would be the best to start with. They also represent some of the biggest Wikipedias by number of articles, which is another bonus. I think that eventually the scope should include all languages, but this should be enough for our application, surely.

If we can reach a little consensus here and on the other topic I started (what sciences to include), I'd be happy to start digging to see if I can find those projects in other wikis. I could probably get around de pretty easily and even communicate a bit, and with a little bit of Google Translate I could get through es and fr as well. jp and ru would be challenging for me so I'd prefer to let someone else do those. Prometheus720 (talk) 02:52, 25 May 2019 (UTC)