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Research:Editorial protocols and cultural pluralization of knowledge on Wikipedia

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Created
20:15, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Collaborators
WikiClub Metapeckeka of the First Nation Atikamekw
Duration:  2023-September – 2026-

This page documents a research project in progress.
Information may be incomplete and change as the project progresses.
Please contact the project lead before formally citing or reusing results from this page.


The research project Editorial protocols and cultural pluralization of knowledge on Wikipedia aims to study the cultural, political and sociotechnical factors that influence cultural diversity in Wikimedia projects. The research will address the case of Canadian content on the French and English versions of Wikipedia. It focuses on content related to indigenous, Franco-Canadian and diasporic cultures, which tend to be under-represented.

The project is carried out in collaboration with Wikimedia Canada and Metapeckeka of the First Nation Atikamekw. It is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)[1].

Context

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Wikipedia revitalizes the universalist encyclopedic project inherited from Western modernity[2] by aligning it with new ideals of digital participation [3]. In this way, it is emblematic of the transition from an industrial society model to a "knowledge society" and a "network society" [4]. However, Wikipedia is frequently torn by conflicts among contributors who disagree on the legitimacy of including certain content related to minority cultures. In the Canadian context, this issue primarily affects content related to Indigenous, Franco-Canadian, and diasporic cultures, which tend to be underrepresented in Wikipedia[5]. This is a significant gap given that Wikipedia serves as an information source for 29 million Canadians [6]. It is therefore important to explain the mechanisms through which the expression of diverse cultural perspectives is negotiated within the encyclopedia.

The Wikimedia Foundation, has made "knowledge equity" a strategic priority[7] and encourages research that sheds light on the relationships between knowledge, culture, and power within the globalized digital public sphere that Wikipedia represents.Our project is part of this effort, focusing on the editorial protocols that regulate the cultural pluralization of knowledge in the production of Canadian content on Wikipedia. Editorial protocols are defined here as the internal policies, rules, and guidelines that govern the collaborative editing activities of the encyclopedia.

By Canadian content, we broadly refer to the informational units (articles, images, definitions, classification categories) produced by Canadian contributors or concerning Canadian topics. The cultural pluralization of knowledge refers here to the inclusion of perspectives reflecting the diverse relationships to knowledge of the various linguistic, geographical, and ethnocultural groups represented within a given Wikipedia, as well as its impact on the selection, writing, and organization of encyclopedic knowledge [8]. Since Wikipedia is organized by language (rather than by country), Canadian content is primarily found in two encyclopedias: the English Wikipedia (the largest, with 6.5 million articles) and the French Wikipedia (the fifth largest, with 2.5 million articles). In 2021, Canadians accounted for 4.6% of contributors to English Wikipedia (far behind Americans, Britons, and Indians) and 5% of contributors to French Wikipedia (largely dominated by the French, followed by Belgians)[9]. Since each Wikipedia is self-managed, there are marked differences between the various linguistic versions of the encyclopedia in terms of their content and governance [10]. But how are intercultural relations organized among the diverse groups that collaborate on the production of Canadian content on Wikipedia?

In the now well-established field of Wikipedia studies[11], typical responses to the issue of coexistence among different cultural groups within the encyclopedia involve identifying "knowledge gaps," defined as "disparities in the representation of a specific category of content, readers, or contributors"[12]. Existing research shows that Wikipedians are predominantly Caucasian males with degrees whose engagement increases with age [13] [14]. Several quantitative studies have measured the extent of "cultural diversity deficits" [15], without considering the influence of internal governance frameworks on content production or the sociopolitical theories of cultural difference. Some qualitative studies have examined cultural conflicts within a version of Wikipedia [16], but they generally focus on general governance frameworks without identifying the existence of frameworks specific to managing cultural coexistence. Finally, to our knowledge, no study compares the English and French versions to investigate the specificity of the Canadian context. Thus, there is a lack of a perspective that targets, on the one hand, the frameworks for negotiating cultural differences in Wikipedia, and, on the other hand, provides a portrait of the Canadian situation. This is the gap that the present project aims to fill.

Purpose

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Research objectives

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The research's main purpose is s to study the relationship between encyclopedic editing protocols and the cultural pluralization of knowledge by comparing two important Wikipedias for the Canadian context: the English and French versions. Comparing these encyclopedias is relevant to understanding how the conditions for cultural pluralization vary across different practice worlds; what principles different Canadian communities use to evaluate the legitimacy of encyclopedic content; and what specific power dynamics are at play in their governance. From the perspective of media communication research, this issue sheds light on the fundamental challenge of multicultural governance on an open and decentralized contribution platform where the dynamics of globalization and cultural localization of knowledge intersect.

The research is then oriented towards three specific objectives:

1. Characterize the protocols for cultural pluralization of knowledge and explain their role in the governance of Wikipedia

We hypothesize that these protocols have four complementary aims: communalization (common provisions applying to all encyclopedic content), localization (provisions specific to culturally situated content), technical interoperability (management of the multiplicity of information), and singularization (management of exceptions, deviations from the rule). Their main applications seem to be in the selection of topics for encyclopedic articles, their informational content (culturally situated perspectives), their writing style (geographical language variants), and their classification (titles, reference categories). The intended contribution is to develop a typology of protocols that can shed light on Wikipedia’s “normative pluralism” (Thévenot, 2022), highlighting the differences between the two encyclopedias. We anticipate that Wikipedia's mode of governance produces an encyclopedia full of variations, which we describe as "baroque" (a style defined by irregularity and eccentricity) in reference to Raymond's (2009) work on the cathedral and bazaar models in the open-source world.

2. Understand the practical application of these protocols and characterize their principles of justification

We presume that the debate over protocols in disputes regarding the inclusion of content from minority cultures invokes various principles of justification, such as encyclopedic neutrality, notability, knowledge equity, and the technical efficiency of the platform. The contribution of this section is to shed light on the processes of evaluating encyclopedic legitimacy in intercultural negotiations between groups situated in asymmetrical power relations. We will clarify to what extent the negotiation of compromises between various principles constitutes a pluralization of “orders of legitimate justification” of knowledge (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991), whose arrangement varies between the two Wikipedias.

3. Explain the relationship between principles of justification and cultural repertoires

We assume that Francophone Canadian Wikipedians have a repertoire marked by interculturalism (Bouchard, 2015), while Anglophones are influenced by multiculturalism (Taylor et al., 1992). Additionally, we believe that both groups share a vision of Wikipedia’s technological infrastructure based on the digital sublime (Mosco, 2005), meaning a tendency to idealize its potential for universalizing knowledge. We will explore how these visions align with a conception of cultural difference oriented toward a “decolonial pluriversalism” of knowledge (Grosfoguel, 2008; Mignolo, 2018), transcending the dilemma between universalism and particularism. This section contributes to the theory of cultural repertoires (Silber, 2003) by highlighting the plurality of Canadian perspectives on the relationship between cultural difference, encyclopedic universalism, and knowledge technology.

Research questions

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  1. What are the policies, rules, and guidelines that regulate the inclusion of diverse cultural perspectives in the French and English encyclopedias?
  2. How are these protocols mobilized, debated, justified, and criticized during conflicts in the writing, organization, and maintenance of encyclopedic content?
  3. What political ideologies and representations of technology do different groups of contributors use to interpret the principles for evaluating encyclopedic legitimacy?

Methods

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Our research strategy is collaborative effort that brings together team members from Wikimedia Canada, active members in both the French and English Wikipedia communities encyclopedias, as well as members of the WikiClub Metapeckeka of the Atikamekw Nation in Manawan.

Working together with practitioners in this way helps ensure that our research is relevant to society, makes data collection easier, and helps verify the interpretation of our findings.

Our approach

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We are using a comparative qualitative approach within the framework of ethnography, with a focus on the digital world. This means we are studying how people interact and behave online by closely examining their activities and interactions. Specifically, we are analyzing how people edit Wikipedia and conducting interviews with contributors (known as "Wikipedians") from both the French and English versions of the site. We are looking at each version of Wikipedia as a separate case study to understand how cultural differences influence content and editing practices.


Activities and Calendar

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Calendar of activities
Phase Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4
Phase 1: Study of protocols
X
Phase 2: Study of disputes
X
Phase 3: Study of cultural repertoires
X

Phase 1 (2023-2024) : Study of Protocols

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Claudie Saulnier presenting at the WikiConference North America on November 12th 2023

We will examine Wikipedia pages from both the French and English versions, focusing on those that outline guidelines and rules about culturally specific topics, perspectives, and language use. We will collect and analyze these pages' content and metadata using specialized software to categorize the information into themes like how rules are created, their purpose, and their scope.

Phase 2 (2024-2025) : Study of Disputes

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We will study cases where editors have disagreed or debated the use of protocols during content editing conflicts. We will gather at least thirty cases (fifteen from each version of Wikipedia) by searching for keywords related to protocol names and Canadian topics. Our analysis will focus on how contributors argue and negotiate power dynamics during these conflicts, including their strategies and justifications, to understand where compromises are made and where tensions persist.

Phase 3 (2025-2026) : Study of Cultural Repertoires

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We will conduct semi-structured interviews with sixty Canadian Wikipedians involved in the disputes studied in Phase 2. Our interviewees will be diverse, representing different geographic locations, cultural backgrounds, genders, and ages. Through these interviews, we aim to understand how Wikipedians evaluate cultural differences, the legitimacy of knowledge, and technology's role in sharing knowledge. We will analyze the interview transcripts to identify common themes and patterns in how contributors interpret cultural diversity in knowledge. We will also relate our findings to existing research on cultural differences and digital technology's impact.

Policy, Ethics and Human Subjects Research

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The first phase of our research relied entirely on publicly available data shared on Wikimedia projects policy pages, in Wikimedia data dumps or available through the Wikimedia API, and therefore did not impact Wikipedian's work. For the second and third phase, will first seek institutional ethics approval by INRS ethics committee prior to data collection and will update this page with further details of the process to be used and the approvals received when available. We will share the results of our work with the community through presentations and workshops, and we are excited to be in conversation about how the findings can benefit the movement.

Results

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Presentations

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Upcoming

Publications

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(French)

Participants

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Research team
Name (username) Institution Role
Nathalie Casemajor (Seeris), nathalie.casemajor@inrs.ca Centre Urbanisation Culture Société (INRS) Lead researcher
Stéphane Couture, stephane.couture@umontreal.ca Département de communication, Université de Montréal Co-researcher
Michael David Miller (BiblioQC) Wikimedia Canada, WikiFranca Collaborator
Benoît Rochon (Brochon99) Wikimedia Canada Collaborator
Thérèse Ottawa (Thérèse_Ottawa) Wikimedia Canada, Wikipetcia Atikamekw Collaborator
Claudie Saulnier Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) Doctoral student
Christopher Housseaux Université de Montréal Master student
Sabrina Mac Gregor (SabrinaMacGrg) Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) Doctoral student

Resources

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  • Casemajor, Nathalie; Couture, Stéphane et Michaud Tessier, Karine. (2017). La présence franco-ontarienne dans wikipédia : rapport de recherche. Institut national de la recherche scientifique; Université York, Montréal; Toronto. URI: https://espace.inrs.ca/id/eprint/6817
  • Casemajor, Nathalie & Couture, Stéphane. (2020). Pluralisation des savoirs et cultures minoritaires. L'identité franco-ontarienne dans Wikipédia. Revue d'Anthropologie des Connaissances. 14. 10.4000/rac.14581.

References

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  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ Featherstone, M., & Couze, V. (2006). Problematizing Global Knowledge: Special Issue. Theory, Culture & Society, 23(2-3).
  3. ↑ Casemajor, N., Bellavance, G., & Sirois, G. (2018).Pratiques culturelles numériques et plateformes participatives: opportunités, défis et enjeux. Montréal: INRS.
  4. ↑ Knorr Cetina, K. (2007). Culture in global knowledge societies: Knowledge cultures and epistemic cultures. Interdisciplinary science reviews, 32(4), 361-375
  5. ↑ Casemajor, N., & Couture, S. (2020). Pluralisation des savoirs et cultures minoritaires. L'identité francoontarienne dans Wikipédia. Revue d’Anthropologie des Connaissances, 14(14-4)
  6. ↑ Casemajor, N. (2023). Protocoles d’interopérabilité culturelle dans Wikipédia : un prisme biopolitique. In M. Severo & N. Sauret (dirs.), Valorisations et appropriations numériques des patrimoines et des mémoires. Communautés et pratiques d’écritures. Nanterre: Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre.
  7. ↑ WMF - Wikimedia Foundation. (2017). Strategy - Wikimedia movement. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction#Our_strategic_direction:_Service_and_Equity.
  8. ↑ Casemajor, N. (2023). Protocoles de pluralisation : négocier la cohabitation culturelle dans Wikipédia. In J. M. Lapointe & S. Montreuil (dirs.), Savoirs libres et projets Wikimédia au Canada. Montréal: Wikimédia Canada / ACFAS.
  9. ↑ Casemajor, N. (2023). Protocoles d’interopérabilité culturelle dans Wikipédia : un prisme biopolitique. In M. Severo & N. Sauret (dirs.), Valorisations et appropriations numériques des patrimoines et des mémoires. Communautés et pratiques d’écritures. Nanterre: Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre.
  10. ↑ Mamadouh, V. (2020). Writing the world in 301 languages: A political geography of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. In Brunn, S. D. & R. Kehrein (dirs.). Handbook of the Changing World Language Map (pp. 3801-3824). Berlin: Springer.
  11. ↑ Reagle, J., & Koerner, J. (2020). Wikipedia@ 20: Stories of an incomplete revolution. Cambridge: MIT Press
  12. ↑ Redi, M., Johnson, I., Gerlach, M., & Zia, L. (2022). Address Knowledge Gaps. Three Years On An updated roadmap for knowledge gaps research at the Wikimedia Foundation. San Francisco: Fondation Wikimédia.
  13. ↑ Joubert, L. (2021) Entre « communautés des contributeurs » et « société des usagers », les communs de masse. Le cas de Wikipédia. Terminal. Technologie de l'information, culture & société, 130, 1-24.
  14. ↑ WMF - Wikimedia Foundation. (2021). Community Insights Report. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2021_Report/Thriving_Movement#Community_and_Newcomer_Diversity.
  15. ↑ Miquel-Ribé, M., & Laniado, D. (2018). Wikipedia culture gap: quantifying content imbalances across 40 language editions. Frontiers in Physics, 6, 54.
  16. ↑ Apic, G., Betts, M. J., & Russell, R. B. (2011). Content disputes in Wikipedia reflect geopolitical instability. PloS one, 6(6).
  17. ↑ https://www.labdelta.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Programme-Rencontres2024_9-mai_Lab-Delta.pdf

See also

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https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Recherche:_Protocoles_%C3%A9ditoriaux_et_pluralisation_culturelle_des_savoirs_sur_Wikip%C3%A9dia

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