{"id":58,"date":"2018-05-15T22:11:15","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T22:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wikidata-workshop\/?p=58"},"modified":"2021-10-28T10:04:35","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T10:04:35","slug":"why-you-should-edit-wikipedia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wikidata-workshop\/why-you-should-edit-wikipedia\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you should edit Wikipedia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wikipedia has a problem with systemic bias<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A 2011 survey<\/a> suggests that on English Wikipedia around 90% of editors are male, and are typically formally educated, in white-collar jobs (or students) and living in the Global North.<\/p>\n

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if there is a typical Wikipedia editor, he has a college degree, is 30- years-old, is computer savvy but not necessarily a programmer, doesn’t actually spend much time playing games, and lives in US or Europe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This means that the articles within Wikipedia typically reflect this bias. For example only 19% of biographies in English Wikipedia are of women<\/a>. Many articles reflect the perspective of English speakers in the northern hemisphere, and many of the topics covered reflect the interests of this relatively small group of editors. Wikipedia needs a diverse community of editors to bring diverse perspectives and interests.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia is also a community that operates with certain expectations and social norms<\/a> in mind. Sometimes new editors can have a less than positive experience when they aren’t fully aware of this.<\/p>\n

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“5 Pillars of Wikipedia” flickr photo by giulia.forsythe https:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/gforsythe\/21684596874 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are only 80,000 regular contributors to Wikipedia. Of these, only 3,400 are considered ‘very active<\/em>‘<\/a>. That’s the population of a small village like Pitlochry<\/a> trying to curate the world’s knowledge.<\/p>\n

We need to increase the diversity and number of Wikipedia editors.\u00a0 One way to do that is to run edit-a-thons and other facilitated activities that introduce some of these norms and expectations at the same time learning how to technically edit Wikipedia.<\/p>\n

Isn’t editing Wikipedia hard?<\/h3>\n

Maybe it was a little hard once but not now. It’s all dropdown menus now with the Visual Editor interface. So super easy, intuitive and “addictive as hell<\/em>“!<\/p>\n