CDC and ASA to design online event for the International Year of Sound 2020

Reviewed by James Ives, M.Psych. (Editor)Dec 5 2019

As the harmful effects of noise are becoming more widely known, popular internet websites are increasingly being used as resources of information for those who are looking to protect their hearing.

For the International Year of Sound 2020 (#IYS2020), the Acoustical Society of America and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, took the lead in designing the online event Wiki4YearOfSound2020.

The event will facilitate the improvement of Wikipedia content in topics related to acoustics, communication, music, noise and soundscapes.

Organizers from NIOSH will launch the Wiki4YearOfSound2020 portion of the campaign Dec. 4 at 8:30 a.m. PT as part of a session called, "Hands-On Demonstrations for Middle- and High-School Students." The 178th Meeting of ASA will be held Dec. 2-6, at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego.

The platform, Wiki4YearOfSound2020, provides guidance and invites anyone with access to a computer and the internet to join. It includes information on how to improve Wikipedia articles and offers a list of existing Wikipedia articles pertaining to acoustics. Information on how to translate Wikipedia articles with suggestions for acoustics-related articles to be translated were also included.

People can also donate images and other media to the open-access repository WikiCommons. A companion page, the Wikimedia outreach dashboard, allows anyone to monitor contributions and reach with great level of detail and accuracy. Tracking has started and will continue until the end of 2020.

So far, the effort has recruited content experts from the hearing health field to edit more than 30 Wikipedia articles, which have already amassed more than 5,000 page views.

NIOSH has hands-on events planned to bring together Wikipedia editing veterans with acoustics experts at the National Hearing Conservation Association conference in February and the ASA meeting in May. This campaign expands on a previous campaign for Wiki4WorldHearingDay2019.

Organizers expect having information so freely available will help people make better decisions about what they expose their ears to.

Session 3aED, "Hands-On Demonstrations for Middle- and High-School Students," will be at 8:30 a.m. PT, Wednesday, Dec. 4, in the Carousel room of the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego.