This is important. I am sure that there are many Wikipedia entries that have been written through a colonized lenses and need to be corrected.
That is truly impressive!
Definitely important! Wikipedia isn’t very intuitive and learning in a low stakes environment is ideal.
I would love to see something like this at an independent living facility or something similar.
Intersectionality is so important to note. I don’t really think too many people were even talking about it in 2011, when one of the surveys was done.
When was this survey done? Ah, 2011. That is a looooong time ago now. I would be interested to see what the numbers are now. Especially since smartphones are much more accessible.
So much history has already been lost by gatekeeping
The biases never end.
“Omitted”
Oh wow! That is very specific, and gatekeepy
Going back to my thoughts about social media… If there is a graffiti artist on Instagram but I can’t create a Wikipedia article about them because they are not ‘notable’, how does one go about making them notable? This is so arbitrary.
The patriarchy, colonialism, and white supremacy are not included when discussing these, I guess.
Lately I’ve been thinking of the use of social media as a primary source for artists of all kinds of mediums. Does Wikipedia accept instagram, tiktok, and other social media platforms are ‘reliable, verified content’?
Want to highlight this
Colonizers be colonizing, still.
I had to read this sentence about 4 times before I understood it. Then it gets restated much more simply in the next line. I should have just kept reading hahahahaha!
Wow! And then I think about how small the % of that 1% is women or BIPOC or queer people, or people from the Global South.
How do we tackle this?!
Good to know these two are related.
Again, who decides this? And the reason why this issue is so tricky and seemingly never ending.
This can also be said about most information and media people consume. It’s something we talk about when teaching information literacy, but few people question who is producing the information they consume and why.
And who decides what IS ‘most’ important?
I hate that this is true, but it is! Even for me!
which has lead to most first results being ads. It’s awful. Then again, it is forcing people to assess the reliability of content (one hopes people are doing this!!)
I remember being in undergrad in 2006 and professors freaking out about Wikipedia. I think some faculty might still freak out over it being used as an only source but it really is a great place to get started!
I can’t imagine how long the list is for content on my own country and culture.
I’m guessing that as they cross people off the list, they encounter more and more that need to be added to the list.
I’m don’t know what this word means, there isn’t much of a definition online. Does it mean a forum, like a platform?
I love this. It does break my heart that (often) family lore and oral history isn’t given the same historical or factual weight than some written history by colonizers.
Because the ‘winners’ write that history.
The group starts the conversation but these types of tasks requite manpower, so there needs to be a way to recruit participants. Reaching out to community members who may be interested.
I love this. Eating together is such a community activity, it melds naturally with discussing community issues. In today’s age of Zoom, I can see the possible reach of communities like these.
THIS!!
I know I have at time fallen into this trap when I have a student at the reference desk with a topic that I know nothing about, my first stop is usually Wikipedia
I’m not very familiar with Wikipedia, so I need to look up what an infobox is, what it does, and why it's important to include it in a Wikipedia article. I’m curious if there are existing initiatives that allow people to work on adding infoboxes for specific topics or subjects to make the task more manageable.
Collective efforts can bridget gaps in knowledge. Meanwhile, recognizing the limitations and the gradual nature of change can foster a more sustainable approach.
Some progress but it’s still not inclusive enough. It does seem to be a myth that Wikipedia is/can become the comprehensive, globally authored encyclopedia it sets out to be.
This is such a large amount that may be deemed “not relevant.”
It’s so important to emphasize that everyone’s voice matters, and to have a comprehensive encyclopedia means there must be contributions from a variety of perspectives and experiences.
Yes! and to empower people to trust themselves as authorities in their own histories.
I should do some editing in Spanish! I am fully fluent. Never thought of that.
This! In my Wikipedia class we had to select some pages to possibly edit. I was very surprised to find out that a very popular Mexican cookie company, Gamesa, was in need of more information! It is a very famous company that you can find in stores in the US. We need more Latinos to also edit. So glad for this project! Hopefully this inspires other groups to add to the Wiki.
This is something I’ve come across in my own research. There have been times I’ve searched for a person/event and was surprised to see that there was no Wiki on them. I would personally love to see women’s history pages updated to accurately reflect their accomplishments.
I think this is an important reminder for everyone. I think it’s also important to emphasize that we must learn from the past to progress, and the way to do that is to make information freely available. If we all contribute, we can create a robust tool for future generations.
I really appreciate this phrasing. Especially contrasted to the goal of finding the one perfect “true” perspective, instead you pursue many perspectives and the wealth of voices to flesh out meaning.
This is a key paragraph, but the context for understanding this question is shifting under our feet. I don’t like the current fixation of Large-Language Models (AI) but for Wikipedia, the possibility of non-human authorship of articles or the use of Wikipedia and it’s existing biases to write future texts is becoming an increasingly vital question.
The idea of non-human authorship in Wikipedia would immediately make me question all of its validity.
A key question to ask of our history.
Not just about our history, but about everything!
There is an excellent philosophical discussion of what it means to make an Encyclopedia in Alasdair MacIntyre’s Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry.
I’m often disappointed that so much of the discussion around the “gender gap” in Wikipedia is framed in gender binaries.
I agree, Adrienne.
Making a note of this for my project proposal motivation!
Oops…meant the sentence before, but these are also relevant!
Interesting—I had no idea that the infobox was tied to the Google Knowledge Panel and to greater visibility in general.
It will be so interesting to see how this might be changing with the proliferation of AI. Google searches have been deteriorating significantly in quality in the past year or two.
This is so true! Now the first result is usually some AI created blurb regarding the topic.
This is great. Three weeks into learning about Wikipedia, I am still very intimidated, so the more ways this can be lessened, the more people we can get editing and making more content!
Wikipedia should do a census! Besides sex and race, it would be interesting to know the ages and occupations of the most frequent editors.
I agree! That would be very good information to know to see who we need to recruit to edit. We also have to think about training those who are not as techie. Wikipedia is definitely not an intuitive platform.
Maybe I’m strange, but I use Wikipedia to find obscure facts and figure out odd things, and I’m usually successful, which makes me really question Wikipedia’s notability standards. Like I mentioned previously, my tiny hometown has an article and it kind of doesn’t make sense to me why. There’s a lot of unremarkable, insignificant things on Wikipedia from my point of view.
Maybe this is because how to edit Wikipedia is not something widely known or thought about. Yes, Wikipedia has lots of documentation on policies and procedures, but without the class we are taking, there’s no way I would even have ever attempted to try to edit.
I agree with Neva. While I knew that Wikipedia was user generated, I didn’t know how easy it could be. I knew that anyone could make changes to content (mostly because of funny changes to politicians’ pages by rude people) but I assumed it was all very regulated because those changes are always fixed quickly.
It is amazing the amount of things that ARE on Wikipedia, some of which doesn’t seem substantive or significant enough to be on there. Updating demographic info is what led me to this class and the fact that my hometown (less than 300 population and not notable for anything) blows my mind.
Those that remain are probably the articles that have been worked on by different people.
This very word causes issues of interpretation among the national Wikipedia communities.
Among these, stubs, that is, sketched articles that need revising to be enriched also with an Infobox.
This is a very important remark. Wikipedia should be a place where untold stories find their way to be disseminated.
At the same time, these stories must be documented in order not to appear invented.
This happens also when the Wikimedia community decides that a topic is not important enough to be included in Wikipedia. There has been a long discussion in Italy about whether also libraries located in small towns should have a page or just be mentioned inside a page about the respective town, whatever the importance of their collections.
That
Involved
Is this the right term, considering that the authors do not appear with their real names?
Could they add the Social Networks and Archival Context entries as a source? https://snaccooperative.org/
I’ve never heard of SNAC, that is so cool!
I like this aspect of the project that encourages research on people, movements, artworks that the group was (potentially) previously unfamiliar with when they made their first list. Not only expanding the content in Wikipedia but within the profession as well.
good summary of BLT project goals
Interesting project to generate photographs of black artists that are then added to WikiCommons for use by article authors
gender inclusion discussion overshadows work of race and ethnic diversity
editorship makeup
peer reviewed articles recommended for article citation in Wikipedia but what about industry-specific peership models?
This is affirming to how I have viewed my place in Wikipedia. I use my skills to make my small impact to further a larger goal. I will remind others of this as well - we can all have our specialty in a greater function.
I also like this distinction - instead of feeling responsible for the whole process, learning a few specific tasks can still be helpful and impactful.
I appreciate the emphasis here on ‘and’, since we know that ‘documented’ and ‘credible sources’ are not the same.
another vicious cycle - lack of information due to systemic bias which leads to lacking from Wikipedia (especially in summarizable form)
I see this as a chicken and egg situation - Is it missing from Wikipedia because it’s lacking from other documentation? Or is it missing from other places because it hasn’t been documented on Wikipedia, gaining a sort of level of notability?
That is such a good point! Especially since Wikipedia is pretty much the first place people will go to.
Will a list of information missing from Wikipedia ever be complete?
Yes! What a great way to fill in current and future gaps!
This is actually different than what I would have expected. This type of ownership is wonderful!
We don’t want to say “no white male editors!” We just need to make sure we use this group of editors in the best way possible.
Talk about a Sisyphus! The frustration involved in this worries me that people who do not have the time (working multiple jobs and have children to care for) will not be contributing fully. Small edits could be done by them, I suppose.
It’s such a barrier to participation. Even if an explanation if provided when the article, or your contribution, is deleted, you need to understand the specific language used by Wikipedia editors to know what to do differently the next time.
By adding diverse voices, we aren’t trying to pull in more bias. We are attempting to pull in information that is hidden from view due to systemic biases.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but I’m afraid that when we talk about ‘bias” we are assuming that the ideal is ‘unbiased’ which I think is a harmful assumption. All observation takes place from a perspective and “perspective” and “bias” are close enough to be synonyms. Maybe there is a way to say that we want to encourage more perspectives and higher-quality perspectives without falling into the trap of imagining a perfect perspective that makes all others invalid.
(I really don’t mean to be disagreeing with your insight here, it’s just leading me off in another direction.)
Yes! Wikipedia articles pop to the top of results, and usually you get information from the Wikipedia article right there in the results and don’t even have to click on it. Absolutely right, there is a LOT of trust here in Wikipedia. I can see the good and the bad here.
I had never heard this term before! What a great way to identify people who use the internet!
We aren’t only missing the knowledge of areas of the world that are underrepresented, we are even missing the knowledge of the very poor in very well represented areas. While we don’t want bias, we want to have the perspectives that will bring in the histories of missing information.
How people produce and share their knowledge can keep them out of the historical record. We need to expand who we include and methods of learning/teaching.
I feel that “educating the public” is absolutely key here. If potential Wikipedians jump into editing without guidance, they will be a little lost (I was at first!). One project I am proposing is a hands-on workshop where we educate attendees on the importance of Wikipedia editing, remove the stigma surrounding the use of Wikipedia in research, and guide them through setting up an account and feeling comfortable taking on the challenge. I believe that so much more ground can be covered that way.
However, as more projects like the ones we are planning in this class are taken on, we will gradually move closer to this “impossible goal”!
It is definitely a monumental goal, but I think that the more we share this information, the more we can engage others in editing and adding information.
Wikipedia risks mimicking the same system it was built to disrupt.
This line is a key takeaway for me!
structure of Wikipedia community assumes that people have equal access to resources (including time) to write edit and organize content
use this in teaching studetns about open pedagogy and importance of citing undercited figures
ratio of Wikipedia contributors to rate of access
impact of systemic bias in media and academia on a subject’s likelihood of having a Wikipedia infobox and therefore visibility in a google search
importance of Wikipedia in terms of trust
perception of wikipedia holding all knowledge
I find this to be rather sad. If this was the case, would we even need to be editing Wikipedia at all? What would be the point of this class?
growth of wikipedia articles between 2007 and 2019 including English and non-English languages
BLT created list of missing notable Black artists and it was several hundred names long
BLT disrupts narrative that creates an “other”
goal is to impact how people think of historical authorship and understand that histories are not static or linear
It’ll be interesting for us all to consider how we can do this for potential Wikipedia collaborators in our own institutions!
I’m thinking of providing something like ‘Intro to Wikipedia Editing’ as a monthly workshop next semester. Maybe if more people know the basics, they will feel empowered to delve deeper.
Show how to create an account, create the sandbox, editing basics, rules and regulations, best practices, and additional resources, including possible editing affinity groups to reach out to.
This and the above paragraphs really illustrate why Wikipedia will never be the utopian all-of-humanity’s-best endeavor that some people perceive it to be, unfortunately. There are so many examples of times when Wikipedia got it wrong, and I’m reminded of when Donna Strickland won the Nobel prize. Someone had tried to create a page for her before she won the prize and she was deemed “not notable” enough. There was a bit of an uproar in the physics community about this.
I agree with Corinne’s conclusion.
While this would be amazing, and is definitely a worthy goal, I think it’s important to acknowledge that it is certainly not the case now and it very likely will never be. Perhaps if every librarian in the world worked on Wikipedia full time, ha! And not even then, actually.
Really important questions that also apply to pretty much any examination of history in the context of underrepresented people. I think that it’s reasonable to both have history that specifically looks at a people group specifically in order to call it out and make it more well-known, but also have history that integrates the contributions of underrepresented people groups.
Indeed! Context is so important!