I am sure that being cited by wikipeida is very good for giving an article more exposure. There is an “altimetric” thingy on some journals that is used to help funders see what other useful impacts an article had on the world beyond citations from other articles, and it thinks wikipedia mentions are high-value (it also likes things like newspaper coverage).
I suspect that it is not that rare for the authors of a paper to go and put a link in wiki to their own paper. I have certainly seen wiki articles mention something with a cite, which, while true, feels weirdly specific.
I’m even aware of some labs that have groups of students who routinely update Wikipedia articles relevant to their research. It sounds nefarious — and some activities might be, i.e. replacing sources from other labs with your own lab’s papers — but really it isn’t super far off from what OP is describing. The role of a scientist is to create and disseminate new knowledge, and there are few venues better than Wikipedia to make new concepts accessible to broader audiences.
There is also some conception of Wikipedia as “for laymen”, which is true to some extent — I doubt number theorists often read the Number Theory article — but also misses the huge contingent of scientists who do use Wikipedia for cursory, high-level understanding of fields adjacent to their own — maybe a combinatorics researcher would read the Number Theory page for a quick overview before talking to a collaborator. I guess your Veritasium post is even a weak example of this! (Congrats on that btw :D)
I am sure that being cited by wikipeida is very good for giving an article more exposure. There is an “altimetric” thingy on some journals that is used to help funders see what other useful impacts an article had on the world beyond citations from other articles, and it thinks wikipedia mentions are high-value (it also likes things like newspaper coverage).
I suspect that it is not that rare for the authors of a paper to go and put a link in wiki to their own paper. I have certainly seen wiki articles mention something with a cite, which, while true, feels weirdly specific.
I’m even aware of some labs that have groups of students who routinely update Wikipedia articles relevant to their research. It sounds nefarious — and some activities might be, i.e. replacing sources from other labs with your own lab’s papers — but really it isn’t super far off from what OP is describing. The role of a scientist is to create and disseminate new knowledge, and there are few venues better than Wikipedia to make new concepts accessible to broader audiences.
There is also some conception of Wikipedia as “for laymen”, which is true to some extent — I doubt number theorists often read the Number Theory article — but also misses the huge contingent of scientists who do use Wikipedia for cursory, high-level understanding of fields adjacent to their own — maybe a combinatorics researcher would read the Number Theory page for a quick overview before talking to a collaborator. I guess your Veritasium post is even a weak example of this! (Congrats on that btw :D)