Good points below.

Also, on the academic side I can see it is academics looking for grants. On the govt side, I have to wonder.  After all, in Wikipedia people will fight to get articles NPOV the govt would like to see biased, like against govt surveillance and Iran, Russia, Palestinians and for surveillance state, Ukrainian nationalists, Israel, etc.  So if they can fund a few studies that make Wikipedia look bad, should they need to crack down on alternative voices, they'll have stuff to demonize Wikipedia with.

But that's the just the tiny conspiracy theorist part of my brain talking :-)

CM

On 8/1/2014 11:31 AM, Kathleen McCook wrote:

It is my perspective that working through the processes on Wikipedia are too democratic for most academics. It is easier to get a  grant and become the defacto expert  than to be part of the conversation. What I went through last week trying to get support for the South African novel, October, by Zoe Wicomb is a lot more than most professors could bear.

But it seems to me that the group process, while more inclusive, can be obscured when experts study us. I have found this to happen to many grass roots efforts when studied. (labor union actions, migrant worker initiartves, etc.)

--Kathleen


Kathleen de la Peña McCook
Distinguished University Professor of Librarianship
USF/SI: http://si.usf.edu/faculty/kmccook/
Academia.edu: https://usf.academia.edu/KathleendelaPe%C3%B1aMcCook
Library Thing:: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/klmccook/allcollections


========

Zandt argues that Wikipedia is biased because the majority of its editors are “young, white, child-free men.”

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with a young, white, child-free man’s perspective, of course—it’s just that there are tons of other perspectives in the world that should influence how a story gets told,” Zandt wrote in an editorial for Forbes last year, entitled, “Yes, Wikipedia Is Sexist—That’s Why It Needs You.”



On Fri, Aug 1, 2014 at 11:21 AM, Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch@gmail.com> wrote:

This is amazing.

That's a lot of money.

Sarah

On Aug 1, 2014 6:04 AM, "Carol Moore dc" <carolmooredc@verizon.net> wrote:
http://freebeacon.com/issues/government-funded-study-why-is-wikipedia-sexist/
Government-Funded Study: Why Is Wikipedia Sexist?
$202,000 to address ‘gender bias’ in world’s biggest online encyclopedia
BY: Elizabeth Harrington

Coincidentally(?) even as we're trying to get the Task Force more together, there have been raging discussions on WP:ANI and Jimmy Wales talk page about this issue.  Someone posted this article link on the talk page.