Recommendation # 13: Develop Different Policies for Notability and Reliable Sources

Q1. What is your Recommendation?

Develop more inclusive policies about what is considered notable and reliable resources for those missing/minority/unrepresented content susceptible to deletion in order to include missing voices and bridge gaps in content, reach, and users (in terms of both access and contributions.

Q2. What assumptions are you making about the future that lead you to make this Recommendation?

Overview of how this recommendation contributes towards the Strategic Direction.

Our policy about what means notability and which are to be considered reliable resources is written with primarily mainstream populations/communities/language in mind (because is related to written culture). Often women biographies, or articles about african/indigenous culture etc are considered not notable because of lack of reliable resources or because the resources are considered not neutral. There is debate about the fact that issues from minority language contexts are erased in majority languages wikis under "local sources / not relevant" claims.
Favor Cultural Diversity, to promote the participation of local organizations in the documentation process is highly recommended. We should verify policies or “rewrite policies to safeguard the inclusion of various groups as editors. Some small wikis can be very territorial and hostile to newbies or people that are aligned with marginalized groups (eg. LGBT)..
Present a new policy for content diversity protection, which can be used in order to defend content from deletion considering its low representation in that Wikipedia. Too much bias in implementing the notability criteria. Ie. topics that pass these criteria through non-western reliable sources still get flagged a lot of times and you need to come point it out. Often times, no one bothers to point out the notability of such articles and they get deleted eventually. This could be useful to defend minorities
There are also unclarities regarding the requirements of notability for newcomers -

There needs to be a broader definition for “reliable sources” as the present criteria is very Euro-centric.

Q3a. What will change because of the Recommendation?

What will be the outcomes of the recommendation?
What will change or shift? (both direct and indirect impact)
How will this recommendation change the structures to enable programmatic work towards becoming the support system for the free knowledge movement to be more effective?

Notability and resources reliability criteria
More inclusive content and participation, preservation of endangered content and cultures
Will also change the perception/consciousness of the community about our gaps
In one hand will increase the engagement on filling the gaps and also the sense of protection from the community towards those unrepresented content
In another hand will create a lot of discontent as will be considered as not the same rule, two weights and two measures

Q3b. How does Recommendation relate to the current structural reality?

Does it keep something, change something, stop something, or add something new?

There is no concrete solution to this problem, it is suggested that if people were less "deletionist" by starting awarenes campaigns, surveys, researches etc

Q4a. Could this Recommendation have a negative impact/change?

Overview of possible negative outcomes of the recommendation, supported by a risk assessment.

Yes, maybe the community will not accept different policies, could consider too permissive or a preferential treatment

Q4b. What could be done to mitigate this risk?

Research about the gaps, awareness campaigns, creating of Wikidata properties to be used/included in templates as article related links (eg. WikiDonne request for Enciclopedia delle donne - Women Encyclopedia) which is used as external link for women’s biographies

Q5. Why this Recommendation? What assumptions are you making?

Explanation of the rationale for proposing this Recommendation. If appropriate us a method such as a ‘Theory of Change’, or the ‘5 Whys’, etc.

Because o lot of articles related to hidden or unrepresented content, not well covered by reliable resources often are proposed for deletion, losing a part of the world’s knowledge. For this reason we need to act as is done with protected species.

Q6. How is this Recommendation connected to other WGs?

Or maybe it is not...

It relates to advocacy, community health and roles & responsibilities.

Q7. Does this Recommendation connect or depend on another of your Recommendations?

No.

Q^. What is the timeframe of this Recommendation in terms of when it should be implemented? 2020, 2021, etc.

Does it have an urgency or priority? Does this timeframe depend on other Recommendations being implemented before or after it?

The earlier the better.

DECISION-MAKING

Q8. Who needs to make a decision on this Recommendation?

Suggestion for who could be the decision-maker for the Recommendation. The right body may not exist and the decision could be related to another WG.

Considering the centrality of the proposal, it might fall between community engagement, research, data analytics.

Q9. How should the decision be made?

Suggestion for decision-making process for the Recommendation.

IMPLEMENTATION

Q10. What type of Recommendation is it? (A short video)

Simple – the what why how are all clear, decision-making is obvious, and the main focus is on implementation.
Complicated – further work is needed to plan in detail how this recommendation will be decided and implemented. A project management or logical framework approach will probably be useful. Scenario planning could be useful.
Complex – how to decide and implement this Recommendation is not clear and further analysis will not help. Instead, an experimental approach is needed, to try smaller safe-to-fail actions/pilots to see how to move forward, iterate, adapt, and learn how to scale up the Recommendation.
Chaotic – absolutely nothing is clear, so bring people together to discuss how to get any traction on this Recommendation.

Q11. How will this Recommendation be implemented?

Overview of the implementation plan for the Recommendation.

Q12. What are the concerns, limiting beliefs, and challenges for implementing this Recommendation?

These could then be taken into account when designing the implementation.

QXX. How much money is needed to implement this recommendation?

A very rough estimate based on your understanding of the order of magnitude required. You are encouraged to break down the number into different elements of the recommendation that have a cost.

Q^. How should the implementation of this Recommendation be monitored and evaluated? By who?

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Q13. Anything else you would like to add not covered above?

This question does not need an answer!

Appendix

Add all the links to the extra data and materials that you would like to share to provide additional context and information related to the recommendation. This will be useful when we look back years from now to understand why we made the choices we did.