Hello! If you are a loyal reader of our news, you will remember Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado’s success in teaching a university course last year. If not, you can find it here. His endless generosity and will to expand scientific knowledge to young minds led him to give a Wikipedia seminar to Daniel Torres-Salinas and Elvira González-Salmón’s translation students.
Last 24th March, first-year translation students from Dani and Elvira’s groups gathered in the same room to listen to the seminar called “Understanding and translating Wikipedia” (or, as he likes to call it, “The first Wikipedia course on Wikipedia”). During the hour and a half that it lasted, he gave a dynamic and insightful talk on what Wikis are, how Wikipedia works (including who can edit Wikipedia and why we should not fear this website), and the important task of translation that is carried out in this particular Wiki.
Students loved it, we the teachers loved it. You can also love it, since the materials he used for the seminar are publicly accessible here. We also encourage you to check out some of his research papers on Wikipedia, such as Wikinformetrics: Construction and description of an open Wikipedia knowledge graph data set for informetric purposes, Science through Wikipedia: A novel representation of open knowledge through co-citation networks or Mapping the backbone of the Humanities through the eyes of Wikipedia.
Once again, we thank Wences for such a perceptive and enlightening time!