Wikimedia Foundation elections/2021/Candidates/CandidateQ&A/Question7/en

What does diversity in the Wikimedia Community mean to you? How can this quantifiably be achieved? (Example: Reduction in Data Gaps)

Question received from a community member on Meta

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

We intent to be diverse, it is why there are so many Wikipedias. Our purpose is to serve our public to the best of our capablities, we find that we do when the traffic numbers show that we grow and diversify our public. There is also sufficient research proving that there is a bias in the result of our content. Many editors are not willing to accept this and, it is why removing bias is a struggle. Research itself is biased as well. English Wikipedia dominates in what is studied.

Dariusz Jemielniak (Pundit)

Diversity in the community means that we have people with different backgrounds, histories, perspectives, cultures, languages. People who understand how different forms of privilege work. The more diversity we have, the more likely it is that we will be able to cover different nuances of knowledge and have more useful angles to offer. Also, we are more likely to fill the gaps in our coverage of knowledge per se. There are many quantifiable measures that can be used, but we need to be mindful of the Marilyn Strathern's observation: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.", so I'm reluctant to offer a specific one indicator, but it is clear that we're far from optimum. The reality is that we don't have equal gender/race/region/socioeconomic status representation among our editors for a number of reasons, and some problems are related to our wiki-culture. I once published an article in the Feminist Review, describing my account of dealing with sexism on Wikipedia, and I have to say that my experience made me realize that if even I, a seasoned Wikipedian, had it tough - what could a person with less experience and background say? I believe that there is a strong role of all formal organizations in our movement, of projects such as Wikiproject Women in Red, phenomenally launched by Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, or of excellent campaigns such as Whose Knowledge?, lanuched by Anasuya Sengupta and Siko Bouterse, and of other new initiatives reaching out to the academic circles to address that. I believe the Foundation is doing already a lot of great work, but the changes take a lot of time, and major, quantifiable results are still ahead of us. Pundit (talk) 12:18, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lionel Scheepmans (Lionel Scheepmans)

Diversity within the movement is a matter of openness rather than participation and statistics. No more than in recreation, we cannot force peoples or cultural groups to contribute if it is not something relevant to them. On the other hand, we should listen to all the requests of these groups to see what is applicable within the projects, taking care to respect the people already present. To come back to the widely debated question of gender, we can make the projects more welcoming without it bothering other editors with technical improvements that would allow, in the case of the French language for example, the automatic and personalized display of inclusive writing via the user preferences.

Reda Kerbouche (Reda Kerbouche)

For me diversity is the foundation of a society in harmony, all cultures, religions, languages, sexes, opinions must subsist together and/or find compromises. In Wikimedia, this is very important because we have to make sure that all the content on our pages is diversified. to reach it, we can do thematic projects as it already exists, and we must promote thematic affiliations such as affiliations in relation with minority languages, the gender gap ... ex.

For my part, I am very active in the diversity of the least visible languages and cultures, because I feel that it is my duty to support them and help them to contribute to be visible. I am the creator of the Tamazight Languages User Group, since its creation you can see lots of projects popping up with these languages there, in a direct or indirect way.

my last project where I took part as an organizer is in Wikipedia in Arabic, where we made a contest with the goal to enhance the visibility of the authors of the Arabic language and of the MENA countries. After determining that the content of female / male authors in the Arabic language was not very present, we started to make them more visible.

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (Rosiestep)

Within the Wikimedia movement, we talk a lot about diversity. Readers, participants (e.g. organizing admins, on-wiki admins, editors, developers, movement organizers, Board members), and content are some of the areas we address, but also society, as it certainly affects diversity.

Readers: In 2018/19, the Wikimedia Foundation researched who reads Wikipedia. The takeaways include: there are many gaps in reader diversity, and the content people read relates to their identity or context.

Participants: According to the 2020 Community Insights Report, 76% of Wikimedians are male; almost 50% of Wikimedians live in Europe and 20% live in North America. The takeaways include: “If we want to increase our Movement’s geographic and gender diversity, we must focus on attracting and retaining newcomers; and our growing diversity is at risk if we do not improve our social and technical environments, especially for those who often have worse experiences.” The Universal Code of Conduct is just one of multiple Movement Strategy Initiatives focused on our social environment (e.g. safety and inclusion).

Content: There are many content gaps within Wikipedia and sister projects. The one most researched by the Wikimedia Foundation is Wikipedia’s content gender gap. For years, Wikimedia México (and others) has facilitated “editatonas”; by July 2021, these efforts have led to an increase in the representation of women on Spanish Wikipedia to 22.02%. Likewise, the Women in Red community has increased the representation of women on English Wikipedia from 15.5% in October 2014 to 18.98% by July 2021.

The diversity of readers, participants, and content is an interconnected subject, and I support the implementation of the Movement Strategy Initiatives which will improve our diversity in each of these areas.

Regarding my own work towards improving Wikimedia's diversity, I am the founder of English Wikipedia WikiProject Women Writers (2014), the co-founder of WikiWomen's User Group (2015), and the co-founder of Women in Red (2015). In 2017, I conducted 65 interviews with Wikimedians across the movement for the Gender Diversity Mapping project, the findings of which appear in the Gender equity report 2018. I speak a lot about diversity issues within the Wikimedia movement; see presentations here and media here. --Rosiestep (talk) 03:38, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mike Peel (Mike Peel)

For me, diversity in the WIkimedia community means that anyone who wants to contribute can contribute, regardless of gender/location/age/etc. - and if they don’t want to contribute (or worse, feel excluded), we should be active in understanding why that is. It also means global coverage of all content in all languages (e.g., English Wikipedia is great with English-speaking countries, but terrible for countries with other native languages! And there’s a lot of expansion work to do in many other languages!).

This means positive outreach in terms of Women in Red and other such online projects to fix areas where we are missing important content, and requires a solid network of affiliates in all countries around the world to do offline activities as well to draw in people who wouldn’t otherwise have edited.

It also requires diversity in the decision-making processes within the Wikimedia organisations, to ensure that the movement has a global perspective. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:14, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Adam Wight (Adamw)

Diversity is how we got something as transformative as "neutral point of view". I personally think of this pillar as "plural" point of view, because it's about people from many different backgrounds collaborating to create something coherent together, through mutual respect and intellectual integrity. Our projects are based on pluralism.

Online abuse is the biggest threat to that pluralism (see the 2015 harassment survey), and its impact falls disproportionately on people who are in a minority on-wiki, such as non-binary people. Stopping this abuse should be the biggest priority for the Foundation, through software design, and for the communities, using policy and direct intervention. Any potential outreach is hamstrung by cultural issues, for example I've heard that the WMF experimented with a brightly-colored background for the "Edit" link, found a strong reader response, but decided against making the change because it felt irresponsible to draw new editors into such a difficult social and technical terrain.

As a small example of what the Foundation can do, there is currently an initiative to make anonymous editing safer, so that users aren't being doxxed just by editing. This software flaw also impacts logged-in users whose IP address is sometimes revealed by a browser tab in "private mode" and so on.

For recent insights into quantifying diversity, I would defer to the Wikipedia Diversity Observatory which was set up to answer exactly this question. To move the needle, we can resource local affiliates, diversify the type of projects we support by hosting an open wiki farm, and look into how to counteract the gravitational pull of the colonial languages which causes people to e.g. edit in English and French rather than a mother tongue.

Vinicius Siqueira (Vini 175)

Diversity in the Wikimedia Community is the assurance of inclusion and representation of different and specific groups in all the dimensions of the Wikiverse. I am extremely sensitive to this subject, and this is one of my strongest motivations to run for the WMF Board.

Fourteen years ago –when I started editing Wikipedia– I got to know the vibrant community behind the projects. This was one of the main reasons that motivated me to keep editing. I was delighted with the possibility of sharing a dream with so many people from so many places in the world.

My personal experience as a physician in impoverished communities of my city, Rio de Janeiro, deepened my interest in promoting and valuing inclusion and equity in representation. Giving voice to minorities and assuring their access to essential rights like healthcare and education are part of my daily work in the Favelas.

I extended the Wiki compromise of “giving access” to my life and this feeds my dreams of changing the world.

As vice-chair in the Wiki Movement Brazil, I contributed and strongly supported our Diversity Plan. --Vinicius Siqueira (talk) 00:54, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yao Eliane Dominique (Yasield)

For me, diversity in our community is more about accepting each other's differences. Accepting that the other is different from me. Accepting that the other is not from the same geographical area as me, let alone the same race as me but we have a common interest which is the sharing of free knowledge. In terms of content or content gap, it depends on the competence and the will of the communities or people interested in the different subjects to be filled on the Wikis projects.

Douglas Ian Scott (Discott)

If we are to ‘‘freely provide the sum of human knowledge to all’’ then overcoming our diversity shortcomings is very important as we only hope to achieve that if we have a diversity of volunteers writing from a diversity of different points of view. People in Africa, for example, are generally better placed to contribute content about notable African subjects as they tend to be more interested in those subjects and often have easier access to information about them than people in other parts of the world. A diversity editors is also more likely to produce a diversity of view points which is very important for establishing a neutral point of view.

I find that one of the most useful ways to look at diversity in the context of our movement is to divide it into two types.

Community diversity: this ranges from demographic to thematic to geographic but also includes other types of diversity such as a diversity of political and socio-economic.

Content diversity: I am most aware of this problem from a geographical perspective as I have found African content on Wikipedia to be lacking. There are also gender based and thematic based content distortions. A very small proportion of biography articles on English Wikipedia re about women for example; technology based subjects are much more extensively covered than social science based subjects is another example. This can also take on a linguistic dimension; isiXhosa Wikipedia for example only has 1 208 articles for 8 million language speakers whilst English has over 6 million articles.

There are also other types of diversity that also need to be considered such as the diversity of our readership. With more diverse content we are more likely to attached a more diverse readership. I have often received feedback that many people don’t read Wikipedia in South Africa because it often does not have content that is relevant to them or they find that it is not presented from a truly neutral point of view.

These two types of diversity along with our readership are interlinked and inter related. A more diverse community tends to enhance content diversity. It is not unreasonable to assume that greater content diversity will result in a greater diversity of readers and a greater diversity of readers helps create a greater diversity of editors/community members.

In South Africa we have been trying to increase both the diversity of our community whilst also trying to improve content diversity. This approach has been driven by necessity as within our local community there is both a lack of demographic diversity which we have observed has caused a lack of diversity of content. Both types of diversity need addressing. We have found that more inclusionary policies and outreach projects with appropriate partner organisations helps. However much more needs and can be done.

Supporting the development of volunteer communities in emerging countries would be an important priority for me. Another important priority would be supporting the inclusion of under representative groups.

Each community and group will have its own unique needs and opportunities for increasing their inclusion. Part of the job of the board and the WMF will be to work out what those needs and opportunities are and support efforts to work on them. --Discott (talk) 15:31, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pascale Camus-Walter (Waltercolor)

Missing data biases data-driven decisions. It is a fact that the movement does not make and publish regular statistics on gender and diversity as other organizations do. There are surveys, but they are based on limited samples and it is not exactly the same as making regular statistics based on our data (if available). This is a point that we must address and we have to take our responsibilities. If the data concerning the Wikimedia projects show a great disparity in the social composition of the contributors, (at this stage, it may not be a gap but an abyss), it has to be monitored regularly (at least once per year). Let's first define what we want to ask about the data. Then it is necessary to think about how we can collect accurate and complete data, analyze them and also, publish and communicate regularly about them. But this will not give us the solution about how to bring diversity in a Wikimedia society which shows to be almost monolithic. We must address this in a special way because it's very serious, thus there are solutions and we can do something. There is no fatality. --Waltercolor (talk) 10:26, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Iván Martínez (ProtoplasmaKid)

Personally, in all the opportunities that I have been able to participate and influence with opinions in the Wikimedia movement, I have had a strong position in favor of different notions of diversity under a strongly postcolonial' look. In doing so, I have pointed out on many occasions that it seems that diversity in the movement is only observed in selection and integration processes based strongly on the notion of different rather than diverse, which seems to me to be very limited. Ensuring diversity needs well-established notions that influence all movement processes such as equity; that is, that people can access the same opportunities regardless of their specific conditions; achieving simple and simplified communication; recognizing privilege, making it clear to the whole community that the very conditions of a world that is not fair and of models of historical domination can be replicated in movement processes. A clear example of this is certain privileges such as the mastery of the English language, which can be a factor of exclusion in the processes of dialogue, communication and decision making in our movement.

When I organized Wikimania 2015, we were the first edition to offer simultaneous translation in one of the tracks, and one room was held entirely in Spanish. I also promoted the drafting of the Buenos Aires Charter, in which affiliates from one region strongly defended the permanent recognition of linguistic diversity.

And there is no diversity if the width of the world is not present in the movement. In practice, for more than a decade I have done a strong work in the integration of my region, where I have supported more colleagues to be present with voice and vote from our environments in all processes.

Victoria Doronina (Victoria)

Diversity means that everybody, irrespective of their gender, race, nationality, age, can create the content. But that's the founding principle. In practice, the first people who got there were from Global North, and primarily men. And now the average age of the contributor is going up. That's not bad in itself, but it also means certain attitudes. For example, in a FB Wikimedians group, I've seen an opinion that NPOW is for English Wikipedia only because smaller projects cannot maintain it. My opponent said that NPOW stems from academic tradition. And the academic tradition belongs to Western Civilisation (read "white men").

That's why guiding emerging communities (previous question) is essential. For example, Russian Wikipedia saw at least two crises when it could have become a non-POV wasteland. They were LGBT-related crisis (which is ongoing in a chronic form), and so-called Sibirian Wikipedia created in a made-up offensive language. The community solved the first crisis, the second needed help from the WMF, who eventually shut down Sibirian Wikipedia.

As for the quantification, we need to expand even more List of articles every Wikipedia should have/Expanded to include lists compiled by the projects other than English Wikipedia, so it is not so heavily Western (mainly English-speaking) culture dominated. The articles' sizes and their status (Good etc.) is quantifiable. The same applies to Commons.--Victoria (talk) 07:44, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lorenzo Losa (Laurentius)

Diversity is important everywhere, because it brings a wider perspective and a better decision-making. In the Wikimedia movement, it is especially important, for two main reasons. The first one is that we want to make available the sum of all human knowledge - not just a specific sector. To do so, it is essential to have contributors with different backgrounds and different areas of expertise, from different parts of the world. The second reason is that we strive to have a neutral point of view (this is a term used on Wikipedia, but most wiki projects have similar principles). To do so, we need different perspectives. Nobody can be neutral alone.

Working in a high-diversity environment is harder than working with a group of people that share the same background and the same ideas. While it generally results in better outcomes, decisions take more time, and misunderstanding are more frequent. Nevertheless, in most cases pushing for more diversity is worthwhile.

Even in a high-diversity environment, we need to share something, and especially we need to share common values. For instance, a person that believes that Wikipedia should not be freely accessible could bring diversity; but it is not the kind of diversity we seek.

Quantifying diversity is very hard, because it has many facets. Even the most apparent criteria of diversity (like gender, geography, ethnicity) are not easily measured in the Wikimedia community, because we do not really know who the volunteers are, except for the few that go to in-person events or are otherwise identified. It is even harder to assess the deeper levels of diversity, the ones that matters the most, that involve the full spectrum of thoughts and points of view of the people.

Raavi Mohanty (Raavimohantydelhi)

We Wikimedia project editors understand that the goal of setting a truly borderless education mechanism cannot exist without the representation of all communities regardless of gender, language, cultures, political perspectives, sexual orientations, etc. However, we are far from realizing that ideal. The flow of knowledge and ideas have a distinct male-dominated, occidental bias when it comes to the Asian and African countries, gender, and people's sexual preference. WMF should become a tool to rectify these biases and not to fossilize them. It is sad to see that the entire community and even countries have been type casted. These biases are rampant in mainstream media, and in arts and popular culture. Wikipedia has a major role to play in ebbing the flow of these biases.

Wikipedia needs more local writers from the developing countries who can represent the voices of their people, and showcase their culture to the rest of the world. Similarly, a great representation is required from the LGBT community to fight against homophobia throughout the globe. Bias against the community is more pronounced in developing countries. Wiki writers should represent every section of society. Raavimohantydelhi (talk) 13:12, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ashwin Baindur (AshLin)

I consider diversity is a characteristic feature of the Wikimedia movement. The volunteers who contribute to Wikimedia are from all the countries of the world, and it is reasonable to assume that they represent every major community, language, political difference, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation and its like. There are over 300 languages present in Wikimedia projects. The topics addressed in the projects are of mind-boggling diversity and represent a very wide spectrum of interests and perspectives. So, overall, we may consider that the movement has good diversity.

Diversity is good for the Wikimedia movement. When people of different origins, backgrounds and beliefs come together, it provides for many viewpoints and perspectives, which in turn would lead to better solutions. The number of good ideas and innovations increases, and the movement as a whole prospers.

However, for this diversity to bring forth a multitude of ideas, it requires that the environment be open, respectful, safe, equitable, just and tolerant of differing viewpoints. It also requires that the community always be on the alert for any practices that discriminate, suppress, prevent other viewpoints or that allow a viewpoint or ideology to dominate by gaming the system.

Diversity of viewpoints and perspectives is also a powerful aid in overcoming systemic bias and reducing prejudice. Diversity helps bring about consensus and compromise, to establish working relations, and push deadlocked issues into dialogue and resolution.

A closer look also shows that this diversity doesn’t exist uniformly. Diversity in matters such as opinions isn’t always valued. We have seen in Wikipedias that women do not form half of the volunteer community. In many Wikimedia projects, there are gaps in topics addressed, misinformation and distortion is present in the sea of curated knowledge. In some cases, communities are taken over by a community who subscribes to an ideological agenda of some kind, in which case the Four Pillars of Wikipedia get compromised.

Today’s Wikimedia tools, WikiData, and other related facilities allow the analysis of the community interactions to not only be done qualitatively, but also quantitatively. We can obtain statistics on various issues from these tools, e.g. breakup of gender of editors, number of articles about female notable personalities vs male, quick deletion of articles of male vs female personalities and reasons given, so on and so forth.

Where specific data-analysis tools do not exist or are not readily available, they could be made by community or provided by the WMF staff.

AshLin (talk) 11:17, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pavan Santhosh Surampudi (Pavan santhosh.s)

Wikimedia movement is a global movement and diversity is an essential part of it. Diversity brings diverse viewpoints, opportunities, capacities, ideas, etc., "We, always, aspired for the diversity in Wikimedia projects to be a mirror and a representation of the diversity of the world." But, unfortunately, our community is not as diverse. Some of the problems we are facing are stemmed from history and world order which is beyond our control and capacity. But, there are some things in our capacity. I believe fixing harassment issues, and continue to support diversity in content & contribution result in a more diverse movement than what we have now.

Harassment is a major issue that stops us from being more diverse. An inclusive, safe and welcoming environment is necessary for a diverse community. Movement strategy recommendation that says "Provide for Safety and Inclusion" gave us clear direction in fixing this issue.
Wikimedia foundation and movement is already working to fix some forms of diversity gaps, especially gender gap. Leaders within the movement like User:Rosiestep are working to fix the gender gap, establish movement entities to tackle the problem, create meta-level knowledge to replicate these models and so on. I believe the foundation should, of course, continue investing more in this and also use this meta-level knowledge to work on fixing other kinds of diversity gaps.

--Pavan Santhosh Surampudi (talk) 14:51, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ravishankar Ayyakkannu (Ravidreams)

Diversity in the Wikimedia movement is about having people of all color, races, languages, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, class, literacy level using and contributing to our projects and being involved in all levels of decision making that is in proportion to their population.

The current lack of diversity in the movement, while being a reflection of the socio, economic, and political gaps that exist in the world, is also aggravated by our projects’ design and movement’s decisions. While it would be highly ambitious and impossible to eliminate diversity gaps owing to factors that are out of our control, we should definitely work towards improving diversity by mending our ways.

We should improve

our projects’ user experience so people of all literacy levels and economic classes are able to use and contribute to it.
our trust and safety support vulnerable and minority groups don’t feel harassed or threatened
funding, training, technical support for emerging communities so they have an equitable chance to grow and thrive like their developed counterparts.

Farah Jack Mustaklem (Fjmustak)

Diversity is something the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia community have been trying to achieve. The diversity that we strive to have is in both the user base and the subject matter coverage. Gender parity is one very important issue to work towards. This can be helped by putting a stop to online harassment and bullying by applying the Universal Code of Conduct, and working with communities to make participation in the projects more inviting and less off-putting. Another aspect to diversity is cultural and linguistic diversity. By encouraging participation in the various wiki projects, and pushing for more inclusion, a more divers user base, and thus more diverse ideas will be presented. --Fjmustak (talk) 23:48, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]