Wikipedia has become an important way to communicate all types of science to the public and the ISCB aims to further its mission by increasing the quality of Wikipedia coverage of related topics, and by improving accessibility to this information via Wikipedia. This competition aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of any topic relating to ISCB's Bioinformatics Core Competencies (see table to the right).[1][2][3]
The competition is open to students and postdocs, either as individuals or as groups. Prizes for first, second, and third place will be awarded during the closing ceremonies of the ISCB-Latin America SoIBio BioNetMX 2022 conference.
How to enter
The competition will open on 1 May 2022 and close on 15 September 2022. For each entry that is claimed in the competition, the difference in quality between these two dates will be reviewed. Contributions made before the opening date or after the closing date will not be counted, although contributions may be made at any point within the competition period.
A
list of 'start-class' quality articles rated as being of high importance for WikiProject Computational Biology is available: any of the articles in this list would be an excellent starting point for a competition entry. Alternatively, a
list of the most popular computational biology articles is available: these are generally towards the higher end of the quality scale; however, any improvements to these articles would be more visible. A list of previous winning articles of the ISCB Wikipedia Competition is provided at the end of the page. Below, we list a few articles that are considered to be of particularly good quality and would be good examples to follow:
Non-English language articles are also welcome. These articles may be original articles, or they can also be translations of Wikipedia articles between languages. Please note on the entry page if the article is a translation.
Entries
Before you sign up...
Make sure you're logged in!
If you already have a Wikipedia account, make sure you've logged in with your account name and password before you register for the competition. To log in, just click this link, or the "Log in" link in the top right corner of the page.
Don't have an account?
If you don't already have a Wikipedia account, you can create an account by clicking this link, or the "Create account" link in the top right corner of the page. You'll need to choose a username and password. For more information, see
Wikipedia:Why create an account?
English and Translations from other Wikipedia languages are welcome but have to be indicated as such. Please add your claims (no more than two in total across the English and non-English competitions) below (please order them alphabetically, so that duplicates are easily detectable):
Please register your interest by typing the following text while logged in as a registered Wikipedia user (for LanguageCode, see the "Wiki" column in this
list of Wikipedias):
* [[:LanguageCode:Article name]] --~~~~
This will display your claim on an article in
interwiki syntax in the following way, using the Japanese (ja) article on
metagenomics (メタジェノミクス) as an example:
For an article to be accepted into the contest, it has to be approved by a user who actually understands that language, and by a member of the jury (the two can be identical). Translations from other Wikipedia languages are welcome but have to be indicated as such. Please add your claims (no more than two in total across the English and non-English competitions) below (please order them alphabetically, so that duplicates are easily detectable):
First Article entry here
Training
To make the best possible contribution to Wikipedia, it is important to understand what content is desirable there and how best to go about editing it. If you're new to Wikipedia, we recommend taking an online training course:
User:Rockpocket/Training and
Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure are particularly useful.
We also strongly recommend that entrants read the PLOS Computational Biology article describing 10 Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia.[4]
Rules and Regulations
Rules and Regulations
The competition is open to trainees and students at any level. Only entries listed on the Competition Entries page will be considered. An entrant or group can participate in both the 'English' and 'Other language' competitions, but at most, two entries in total can be “claimed” per entrant or group. Once an entry is “claimed”, it is considered as out of bounds for other entrants in the context of the competition. However, "claiming" a Wikipedia entry does not provide an entrant with any
ownership rights over it; all Wikipedia norms on collaborative editing must be respected. Claiming a Wikipedia article in one language does not stop other entrants claiming the corresponding ones in another language.
Any entrant may claim a Wikipedia article and edit pseudonymously, but if shortlisted, he or she must identify themselves to one of the judging panel, with proof of student/trainee status, to be eligible for a prize. In the case of a group entry, the group will need to decide and implement how the prize will be distributed among the members. Please note that multiple people editing from one Wikipedia account
is not permitted, therefore each member of a group must edit from their own account.
The following criteria will be used for judging the article entries:
Clarity of writing
Depth of knowledge of the subject area
Relevance to computational biology, based on the WikiProject "importance" rating of the article
Quality of figures and photos used to illustrate the article
All content added to articles during this competition must adhere to the basic policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. This includes:
No plagiarism. Material must not be
copy and pasted from other sources (including textbooks, journals or websites), but instead should be reformulated in your own words and be
appropriately cited.
The judges will be assessing this, and any article found to have plagiarized text or to contain non-free material under copyright will be disqualified. Please note that it is permissible to translate a Wikipedia article from one language to another but this has to be indicated.