WHO partners with Wikipedia in the fight against Covid-19
A new article on Forbes reports that the World Health Organization (WHO) is partnering with Wikipedia to relay its information resources about Covid-19 through the site.
This move makes public health information available for redistribution in any medium or format, thanks to Wikipedia's Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license. This license also grants permission for people to transform, edit or expand on the information, or even use it for commercial purposes. The one condition being that the information is attributed and shared under the same licence.
This information consists of infographics, videos, and other content types, and will be translated across a variety of languages by over 250,000 Wikipedia Volunteer Editors.
The CEO of Wikimedia Foundations, the company behind Wikipedia, spoke on the importance of access to information about the pandemic, saying:
The World Health Organisation has long been concerned and aware of the spread of misleading or fake news, images, and videos. That isn't exactly what the organization wants happening during a global pandemic, this large-scale scattering of misinformation has caused very negative outcomes such as stockpiling food after supply problem rumors went around, which actually caused real shortages.
This new partnership should certainly help the fight against Covid-19, especially considering the popularity of Wikipedia. It also goes without saying that WHO's information on Wikipedia will spread to many other sites on the web, helping it reach even more people and hopefully making a positive impact on this awful global health crisis.
This move makes public health information available for redistribution in any medium or format, thanks to Wikipedia's Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license. This license also grants permission for people to transform, edit or expand on the information, or even use it for commercial purposes. The one condition being that the information is attributed and shared under the same licence.
This information consists of infographics, videos, and other content types, and will be translated across a variety of languages by over 250,000 Wikipedia Volunteer Editors.
The CEO of Wikimedia Foundations, the company behind Wikipedia, spoke on the importance of access to information about the pandemic, saying:
| "Access to information is essential to healthy communities and should be treated as such. This becomes even more clear in times of global health crises when information can have life-changing consequences". |
| "All institutions, from governments to international health agencies, scientific bodies to Wikipedia, must do our part to ensure everyone has equitable and trusted access to knowledge about public health, regardless of where you live or the language you speak." |
This new partnership should certainly help the fight against Covid-19, especially considering the popularity of Wikipedia. It also goes without saying that WHO's information on Wikipedia will spread to many other sites on the web, helping it reach even more people and hopefully making a positive impact on this awful global health crisis.
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carolwilli -
Thanks - Reply
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