Public outreach/Academy/RfC/Tim's talk

Draft outline for 30 min talk

Thesis - Wikipedia is a uniquely valuable resource for public education

Argument - 3 points, cover in order

• High profile

1. Paper data on search engine results
2. Seasonality data
3. Swine flu traffic data

• Rapidly updated

1. Track expansion of flu content
2. Discuss news vs background (many things to many people)

• Inexhaustible background information

1. Define wikilinks
2. Show link web from Influenza article
3. Track a possible "educational journey" from that article

Slide titles and contents

1. Scientific literacy is low - some scary facts, emphasis on pubic support and understanding of science, note internet imporant source of science info.
2. "Wikipedia as a source of scientific information" - Introductory title slide
3. "Articles have a very high profile" - Google rank of articles, seasonality, and per day traffic on some FAs, free access for general public, translated into 100s of langauges
4. "H1N1 influenza as a case study" - Graph of per day hits on "Swine influenza", list main relevant articles
5. "Rapidly updated content" - images of Swine Influenza article before, during and after expansion, note addition dates of recent papers to relevant influenza articles
6. "Articles vary in size and quality" - Mention John's talk, Compare "Influenza" (FA), "Amantadine" (reasonable quality), "M2 protein" (low quality), and "H5N1 genetic structure" (100-200 readers per day). Summarise academic studies on article accuracy
7. "Rapid updates of news articles" - Compare content presented in "Swine Influenza" (scientific) with "2009 flu pandemic" (news)
8. "Inexhaustible background information" - Define a Wiilink, show lead of Influenza article, note which terms are linked and number of links in lead, explain that this defines unfamiliar terms and allows main articles to summarize and introduce many others
9. "A web of information" - Show images of articles linked from same Influenza lead, visiting in a series "Virus", "Bacteria", "Nitrogen fixation" and "DNA". Contrast to news media articles.
10. "Multiple articles for a diverse audience" - "Introduction to genetics", "DNA", "DNA structure" and "DNA supercoil", explain that increasing levels of technical detail allows a reader to drill down to detail or just get a broad overview. Not just scientists writing articles, input from general readers very valuable
11. Acknowledgments

Transition to Bill - "After the coffee break Bill will talk about specific ways in which you can contribute."