The profile of Provost Linda Doyle and her historic appointment to the top job of Trinity College has been chosen from some 6,400,000 articles on Wikipedia to feature on the site’s front page today.
Under the “Did You Know?” heading on the front page, a fact about Doyle reads: “Professor of Engineering and the Arts Linda Doyle in 2021 became the first female provost (head) of Trinity College Dublin since its 1592 foundation by Elizabeth I?”
Doyle’s featuring on the page coincides with International Women in STEM day. The Provost is a former Dean of Research in Trinity and was the founder of the CONNECT research centre.
Doyle was appointed as the 45th Provost of Trinity in August 2021, succeeding Patrick Prendergast, who held the position since 2011. She defeated Prof Jane Ohlymeyer and Prof Linda Doyle in a female-only election.
Her Wikipedia page has recently been expanded to include details about her work in Trinity and elsewhere, as well as an overview of her provostship so far.
Wikipedia is a free, not-for-profit online encyclopedia, edited by volunteers through an open-collaboration system. Editors range from expert scholars to casual readers. Anyone who visits the site can edit it, but there are mechanisms in place to ensure information on the site is factual and impartial. Articles are written from a so-called “neutral point of view”, without emotive or opinionated language.
According to the site itself, “overall, Wikipedia gets hundreds of times more well-meaning editors than bad ones, so problematic editors rarely obtain much of a foothold … It is inherent in the Wikipedia model’s approach that poor information can be added, but that over time those editing articles reach strong consensus, and quality improves in a form of group learning, so that substandard edits will rapidly be removed”.
“This assumption is still being tested and its limitations and reliability are not yet a settled matter – Wikipedia is a pioneer in communal knowledge building of this kind.”
Writers are encouraged to use verifiable references and authoritative sources to back up statements of fact in articles as much as possible.
Other oversight mechanisms in the site’s editing structure include identifying people or organisations editing their own pages to present themselves in a flattering light, or catching “sock puppet” offenders – anonymous accounts set up for the purpose of adding misrepresentative or misleading information on a page.
