[WikiEN-l] Missing Wikipedians: An Essay

[Charles Matthews]

On 18/02/2011 23:24, aude wrote:
> Heather Ford, a former Wikimedia advisory board member and researcher/writer
> in South Africa has written an essay, "The Missing Wikipedians" about
> systematic bias on English Wikipedia (especially) against new users and
> topics pertinent to Africa and other diverse places/people.
>
> As an example, she cites the English Wikipedia article [[Makmende]] and the
> deletion request made, biting the newbie.
>
> http://hblog.org/2011/02/16/the-missing-wikipedians/
>
> Please read and discuss.  What might we do to help make Wikipedia a more
> welcoming place for newbies and for such diverse topics?

It is pretty much normal for discussions of (what amount to) the 
limiting factors on the community to examine multiple strands of 
argument, inconclusively. This essay is concerned with "local 
notability", and that is certainly worth parsing out separately, as 
other strands are.

If the context is Africa, as opposed to India (say) with its very large 
pools of speakers of non-English vernaculars and vast literatures, there 
are special aspects. Discussion of Kiswahili is special again, since the 
native speakers are a relatively small subset of those who speak it as a 
matter of convenience, in the armed forces and so on.

Trying not to conflate issues (which is the bane of these discussions): 
I have some idea of the problems of small Wikipedias such as 
lg.wikipedia.org, from discussions with speakers of Luganda on the 
ground. Generally, educated Baganda would regard English (as written 
language) as the natural channel for informing themselves: the Ugandan 
(Kampala) press is largely in English, though there is a Luganda 
tabloid. Certain topics such as the clan/surname system would interest 
them, and there is literature. But lgWP is just on the edge of 
viability, it seems, at the level of having to repel spam and vandalism. 
Such communities have to grow themselves first, to get more than a 
toehold: there are reasons why there are fewer than 300 language 
editions, which represent around 5% of world languages.

At the intermediate level, and swWP, you could say there is a basic 
systemic bias issue against East African content crossing into enWP. How 
bad is it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makerere_University is 
comparable to http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuo_Kikuu_cha_Makerere, and 
the alumnus links seem to be somewhat fuller of blue.

The essay pegs its point on a popular culture article, though. This is 
what journalists also tend to do: take current affairs, popular culture 
and BLPs as representative. We should note that many encyclopedias would 
give you *nothing* on these areas. There are good reasons why these 
areas are contentious, both for inclusion of topics and for vetting of 
content. There still is "no free lunch" in this world, and we have 
discovered the hard way that exclusion of garage bands has a cost. The 
syllogism is that if you exclude garage bands and suchlike you will 
offend potential contributors and so damage the growth of the community. 
This is actually true.

There is a potential cost the other way, though, and this is often left 
undiscussed. Would "serious encyclopedists" be deterred from 
contributing to a site that was too MySpace-like? This is the return of 
the "too much Pokemon and Star Wars" argument in another form. Obviously 
the answer is that this is also true: enWP's "missing Wikipedians" 
include those with recondite knowledge who are not donating their time 
to posting it for us (for example 99.9% of academia). We could postulate 
a solution to that by upping the prestige of the site to the point that 
writing an FA could go on a tenure-track person's CV. Another decade for 
that to happen, though.

Where does this leave us?

1. There is basic ecology - language communities will thrive to a 
greater or lesser extent according to factors that are largely to do 
with demographics.
2. "Missing Wikipedians" is always going to be a misnomer. When your 
readership is in nine figures and the editorship might be in the low six 
figures, looking at people who say "tried it once and didn't like it" is 
a way to lose the signal in the noise.
3. All our communities need better care and nurture. The attitudes that 
will be helpful against systemic bias are pretty much those that work 
against other negatives (stick with AGF and a universalist outlook, 
don't shoot from the hip even if you are feeling under pressure, and 
don't force the issue on contentious matters).
4. Sensitivity to "local notability" ought to be a matter of education 
(I can see you might think this matters, even if I don't see why). We 
have a universalist if flawed notion of notability, and one reason it is 
still there is that it does argue against parochialism.

Setting out my own stall, I think the "old school" approach is still 
good stuff; and I'm against the unnecessary barriers to entry that are 
put in place (with good intentions) by those who argue for *immediate* 
cleanup of problem articles over maintenance and allowing some backlogs 
- and their allies who want the Manual to impress at whatever cost.

Charles