Wikipedia – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Create Wikipedia Entries on ICD Topics

Wiki Education is asking that faculty consider assigning students to write articles for Wikipedia. Wikipedia has limited entries on intercultural dialogue-related topics. The two seem a natural fit.

In Wiki Education’s Wikipedia Student Program, college and university instructors assign students to write Wikipedia articles, empowering them to share knowledge with the world. Students research course-related topics that are missing, underrepresented, incomplete or inaccurate, synthesize the available literature, and use free tools and trainings to add information to Wikipedia. They are now accepting submissions for the Fall 2022 term.

I’ve not used Wikipedia assignments in courses because I retired before this became a thing. However, I learned the process in order to create a page for the Center for Intercultural Dialogue, and later was asked by a colleague to please create an entry for intercultural dialogue as a topic, as there was not yet anything available on the site. So I know it’s not difficult, and I also know that there is not as much content on related topics as there might be. Therefore, I suggest that anyone looking for a new and interesting type of applied assignment might want to consider the creation of Wikipedia pages as a possibility as a way to ensure that Wikipedia has the most up-to-date content relevant to intercultural dialogue topics.

For students, one benefit is that it is possible to check how many times anyone has viewed an entry. The ICD entry has been available for under two years, but has already had over 5000 views. Having that kind of impact should help motivate any student to do their best work.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Wikipedia Entry for Intercultural Dialogue

Daniel Mateo Ordóñez recently pointed out that Wikipedia did not yet have an article on intercultural dialogue, so I wrote one. That entry is now published.

If there are topics related to the concept that you would like to see included, send an email, or post a comment below.

As a reminder, CID does have its own Wikipedia entry, created several years ago, with the help of Minh Cao. Similarly, if there are additional topics you would like to see included on that entry, let me know.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

CID is on Wikipedia

In case there has been any doubt, the Center for Intercultural Dialogue definitely exists – and we know this because now there is a Wikipedia entry saying so!

This was created as one response to the National Communication Association’s call for increased entries on communication-related topics by communication specialists. (Details may be found on the NCA Wikipedia Initiative page.) For those who have not yet created an article on Wikipedia, the official standards are quite stringent about what is sufficiently “notable” to merit an article. (Of course, that doesn’t mean all articles currently posted meet those standards.) And there is an elaborate formal system to learn in order to participate in the site. But in today’s world, there is a sense in which any serious endeavor should be represented there, so it seemed worthwhile creating an article.

Minh Cao gets credit for taking the time to first learn the guidelines, and post the first draft. For those who have not yet created articles, a warning: this took 3 drafts over 2 months, and help from 4 different editors at Wikipedia, before approval was granted for a substantially shorter article than originally envisioned. Apparently such delay and critique are common.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue