Wikipedia, from being a mere ‘feeder’ project of another encyclopedia project, Nupedia.com, in January 2001 became the world largest online free-content encyclopedia and reference website. Wikipedia can be fed by everyone but those who do so are called contributors. Articles contributed to Wikipedia can vary from articles on different fields; debates memoirs, movies, to even biographies of people. The only clause is that entries must abide by very stringent rules on copyright, non-advertising, formatting, notability and others that might require some technical know-how.
Articles on notable people are referred to as their pages and they contain everything about you. The following are some importance of having a page on Wikipedia:
Wider Reach As an academic with a lot of research works, we all know a chunk of the reason for doing these researches is for people–for people in your field and the ones that are not. Since research work is usually for the people, it is only reasonable and productive to make these works accessible to the people; this time, more people.
Having a page on Wikipedia which will contain information about you and your work will help achieve this. How?
Wikipedia is the fifth most visited website and the largest online encyclopedia. This fact, alongside other SEO advantages of Wikipedia to be discussed later in this article would give you a wider reach. This wider reach further reflects the increase in your h-index, which is the number of times your works have been cited.
SEO Advantage
Social Engine Optimization concerns everything provided it’s online and someone has to search for it. It deals with you having your content (name or works) pop up at the top of the search engine result pages. This is a huge plus Wikipedia will give you. Google search engine places Wikipedia at the top in its search engine result pages and even you can testify to this because you must have noticed it anytime you search.
If you are in doubt, enter the name of the president of your country on Google search engine and see which website comes up at the top. 77% of 1.52 billion search engine users conduct their searches via Google search. This means about 1.17 million people will get to see you or your works first when they search for your name or a keyword in any of your works. This further strengthens the first importance of having a wider reach.
All your works in one place
Wikipedia works on three policies: ‘neutral point of view’, ‘no original research’ and ‘ Verifiability’. These policies together with a lot of other rules make sure articles are reliable, objective and not promotion/profit-oriented. Therefore, an article/page on Wikipedia must have credible sources else it’ll be deleted. This means your page will have all references to major milestones in your career.
So, everything in your career is put together in just one article, and whenever anyone reads, they also get to see all your work summary and can easily go to them if they wish. In this case, Wikipedia serves a bridge between your works and people who need them, hence saving them the hassle of combing the web. It saves you, too, the hassle.
Note that, as a senior academic, you are notable and that is why you having a page on Wikipedia is possible. Much more, you are the important academic and getting yourself on Wikipedia is to not cover your bright lantern with a blanket, but put it in the open where everyone can use its light.
Wikipedia page creation is not a simple task as Wikipedia tends to reject entries that failed their various technical guidelines, the only possible solution is to let our team of professionals do it for you, from the curation of fitting content to finalizing the final draft, a lot has to be taken care of. Contact us now!
