Geneva/New York, October 22 – The World Health Organization and Wikimedia Foundation announced join efforts to defeat widespread misinformation online while people worldwide need facts and trusted sources of news to fight the pandemic.
Wikipedia, which is administered by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, will provide its formidable global network of over 250,000 volunteer editors to assist WHO in disseminating more than 5,200 Covid-related articles in 175 languages.
Both organizations said the collaboration will make trusted, public health information available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license as Covid-19 showed signs of strong resurgence and the public everywhere demand facts about the coronavirus.
“Through the collaboration, people everywhere will be able to access and share WHO infographics, videos, and other public health assets on Wikimedia Commons, a digital library of free images and other multimedia,” they said in announcing the join venture.
“Equitable access to trusted health information is critical to keeping people safe and informed during the COVID-19 pandemic,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “Our new collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation will increase access to reliable health information from WHO across multiple countries, languages, and devices.”
WHO said it had been fighting “infodemic” since the beginning of the pandemic. It defined infodemic as “an overabundance of information and the rapid spread of misleading or fabricated news, images, and videos.”
Wikipedia editors have also been at the forefront of the fight against misinformation.
“Access to information is essential to healthy communities and should be treated as such,” said Katherine Maher, CEO at the Wikimedia Foundation. “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.”
The two organizations said in news release that while they are building up their collaboration, the public in the meantime can access WHO’s mythbusting series of infographics on Wikimedia Commons. In the coming months, the Wikimedia Foundation and WHO will continue uploading resources to Wikimedia Commons and collaborating with Wikipedia volunteer editors to better understand gaps in information needs on Wikipedia articles related to COVID-19 and how WHO resources can help fill these gaps.
Additionally, under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, other organizations, individuals, and websites can more easily share these materials on their own platforms without having to address stricter copyright restrictions.