Wikipedia piece primer

Spotlight: Wikipedia and Gendered Online Spaces

Introduction

The digital humanities is not all about building things using new tools. Something which is extremely important to be aware of and to discuss critically is the prevalence of online spaces and the discrimination and harassment which is all too prevalent in these spaces. The detachment of an online identity can be both empowering and dangerous, leaving one vulnerable to this targeting. Furthermore, the infrastructure of some websites do not properly account for the discrimination that certain users face. Though this is just the tip of the iceberg, one such example is Wikipedia.

Why is Wikipedia so important?

The site has over 17 million articles in 279 languages, and is visited by over a million people each day
Wikipedia serves a dual archival function of memorializing the past while producing an archive of the present for future generations, thus constructing this future understanding of history according to particular biases.
Roy Rosenzweig reads Wikipedia as an act of history, saying: “like journalism, Wikipedia offers a first draft of history, but unlike journalism's draft, that history is subject to continuous revision. Wikipedia's ease of revision not only makes it more up-to-date than a traditional encyclopaedia, it also gives it (like the Web itself) a self-healing quality since defects that are criticized can be quickly remedied and alternative perspectives can be instantly added” (Rosenzweig).

How is Wikipedia’s structure problematic?

Wikipedia’s crowdsourcing model suggests open and diverse participation from gendered, racial and sexual minorities. However, Wikipedia is subject to strict policing and systemic structures which serve to both protect the program from “vandalism” while also controlling the discursive narratives which are published and maintained.
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has addressed topic bias, the idea that an article must meet a certain standard of importance in order to not be deleted, a standard which is identified by the (mostly male) users who contribute to this decision. Wales made the example of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress, as the Wikipedia article concerning it was flagged for deletion and subject to rigorous debate. On the article’s talk page, for example, one post reads: “This is frankly trivial, and surely isn’t notable enough to be on Wikipedia. Request deletion” (Wikipedia). A response says: “I strongly agree! The sheer presence of this article is one of the lowest points ever reached by Wikipedia! What amazes me is that there’s acculturated people (since the article was well written) who has such interests, and free time to lose to devoted themselves for such totally irrelevant arguments” (Wikipedia). The writer of the latter statement has, interestingly, “created, expanded, or largely wikified” hundreds of articles himself, mostly on the subjects of Italian architecture and Renaissance artists.

The gender gap

Susan Herring explained the enactment of the gender gap as maintained by Wikipedia’s preferred style. Herring claims that men tend to “assert their opinions as ‘facts,’ whereas women tended to phrase their informative messages as suggestions, offers, and other non-assertive acts.” She claims that Wikipedia “doesn’t allow for the non-assertive style preferred by many women. Rather, it enforces a “neutral point of view” policy, which favours a more masculine style of communication – just the facts, ma’am.”
When adding or editing biographies, especially of living people, the regulations are very strict, and any sentence or insertion that cannot be established as neutral will usually be subject to rapid deletion. Firstly, the page must focus on facts relating explicitly to the individual’s notability.
Wikipedia’s biography regulations page is particularly concerned about articles focusing on people who are known for being victims. The rules enforce that editors should not write in a way that “amounts to participating in or prolonging the victimization.” However, these two regulations are contradictory: if by reducing the Wikipedia page to focus on the person’s notability inevitably reproduces the facts of their victimization, is this a form of further victimization? Or can the existence of these pages represent a kind of reclaiming of agency by spreading the person’s story to a wider audience?

Conclusions

If the preserved information is cultivated by a selective group – in this case, the active, predominantly male Wikipedia editors, then Wikipedia is subject to these constraints of the archive in which certain narratives are preserved, serving unilateral interests and goals.
How, then, do we compensate for the silences of Wikipedia – for the censors enforced in the name of accuracy and fairness? What assumptions and beliefs fill in that void?

A Digital Humanities Primer for English Students