Human-dominated landscapes tend to be homogenized in a that’s often invisible to us. Tourists visiting anywhere in the tropics expect a see lot of the same things — coconut trees, mangos, pineapples, bananas. Despite the fact that the tropics are some of the most biologically diverse regions of the planet, we see this artificial aggregation … Continued
Life, as we are inclined to picture it, relies on the existence of diversity in the world. The existence of different species makes it possible for living things to exploit different ways of making a living in the world. And that all stems from lineages to split and generate new species. Major waves of diversification … Continued
Wikipedia remains the product of the world in which it is created. A recent survey of US-based contributors to the English Wikipedia found that only 0.5% of editors identified as Black or African American. Making the contributor base more closely resemble the world at large is an important step toward a more equitable Wikipedia. And … Continued
In a presentation at WikidataCon, Érica Azzellini said something that got me thinking: “A mountain could also be an instance of a divine being”. I was born in a town built on the slopes of a single hill standing beside the sea on the west coast of Trinidad. Though it rises less than 200 m above … Continued
The Catoctin Formation is a geological formation that extends from Virgina, through Maryland, to Pennsylvania. This ancient rock formation, which dates to the Precambrian, is mostly buried deeply under more recent geological deposits, but is exposed in part of the Blue Ridge Mountains. And until a student in Sarah Carmichael’s Petrology and Petrography expanded it this Spring, Wikipedia’s article … Continued
As the COP26 summit comes to a close, many people are reflecting on what we can do to help solve the climate crisis. For some student editors in Wiki Education’s Wikipedia Student Program, they already have: they’ve helped shape the world’s understanding of climate change and its impacts by sharing scientific information on Wikipedia. While … Continued
Reef-building corals rely on photosynthetic symbionts to be able to build reefs. Soft corals, which don’t rely on these symbiotic algae, are able to grow in much deeper water. In the case of Primnoa pacifica, this means that are are able to live in cold, dark waters as much as 6 km below the ocean surface. … Continued
In the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests and the 2017 Unite the Right rally, the question of monuments and their meaning has come to the forefront. Students in Oliver Wunsch’s Contested Monuments class worked on improving a number of Wikipedia articles about monuments, ranging from the Statue of Jefferson Davis at the U.S. Capitol, to the Gay Liberation … Continued
Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality is a new book by Zachary J. McDowell and Matthew A. Vetter that was published by Routledge this summer. The entire book is available for download free from the publisher or as a free Kindle download from Amazon. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Making a change to its content … Continued
