Princ-wiki-a Mathematica: Wikipedia editing and mathematics

TL;DR

This paper discusses how to create and edit mathematical articles on Wikipedia, covering technical content, biographies, and community dynamics, highlighting Wikipedia's role as a key resource for learning mathematics.

Contribution

It provides an overview of editing practices for mathematical content on Wikipedia and explores the social aspects of the editor community.

Findings

Wikipedia hosts nearly 7 million English articles, including 27,000 on mathematics.

Guidelines for editing mathematical articles are discussed.

The social dynamics of Wikipedia's mathematics editor community are analyzed.

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, Wikipedia has gone from a rather outlandish idea to a major reference work, with more than 60 million articles across all languages, including nearly 7 million in English [Wiki01]. Around 27,000 of these articles concern mathematics [b], and Wikipedia is the first place that many of us go to learn about a new mathematical idea. In this overview, we will discuss how to go about creating or editing an article on a mathematical subject. (Most of this applies equally to topics from other technical fields.) We will also discuss biographies of mathematicians, articles on mathematical books, and the social dynamics of the Wikipedia editor community.