Wikipedia has become one of the main sources of consultation and is one of the ten most visited web pages in the world. Despite its 22 years of life and important documentation work by thousands of volunteers, Wikipedia and the rest of the Wikimedia Movement projects have the same biases that exist in our society.  

The gender gap, content and publishers, is one of the most serious problems faced by Wikimedia projects. To know more about it, about the investigations that are being carried out, and to propose solutions and identify new studies, the group Wikisphere and the project W&W Women and Wikipedia, in coordination with Medialab Slaughterhouse, met on 31 March and 1 April 2023 at scholars and experts from the Wikimedia community to share data, information and knowledge with all the people who attended, interested in improving these free spaces for consultation.

We welcome you to the event of Nataliia Tymkiv, President of the Wikimedia Foundation, who sent us not being able to accompany us in person at the meeting:

They were two intense days in which reflect, share knowledge and join efforts to identify gender gaps in Wikimedia, study them and propose solutions that help end them. It was an enriching and necessary meeting to share research, experiences and concerns of academics, experts and people from the Wikimedia community.

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> Presentations

Maria Sefidari Huici (disambiguation), doctor-researcher

Wikipedia and the practical application of knowledge equity

[ PDF presentation ]

Núria Ferran-Ferrer, doctor and research officer W&W Women and Wikipedia

What is researched in the gender gap in Wikipedia and what solutions does academia propose?

[ PDF presentation ]

David Ramirez-Ordonez, researcher at the University of Barcelona and part of the research W&W Women and Wikipedia

What are the arguments for deleting women's biographies from the English Wikipedia?

[ PDF presentation ]

Julià Minguillón, doctor-researcher at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and part of the research W&W Women and Wikipedia

How and where do women edit in the Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician Wikipedias?

[ PDF presentation ]

Yessica Macià, researcher at the University of Barcelona and part of the research W&W Women and Wikipedia

How is content organized across categories on Wikipedia?

[ PDF presentation ]

Miquel Centelles Velilla, researcher at the University of Barcelona and part of the research W&W Women and Wikipedia

What does Wikidata offer for the visibility of women's biographies on Wikipedia?

[ PDF presentation ]

> Possible solutions

1. Equity of knowledge on the cover of Wikipedia

• It was proposed the creation of a transparent Editorial Board to improve the presence of women on the cover of Wikipedia and the drafting of a formalized and shared Editorial Policy to ensure equity in the selection of content for the cover.
• It was suggested that the Wikipedia cover could be customized to democratize it and give more power to users, and that the decision on the content that appears on the cover be divided between editorial policy and the interests of users.
• It was proposed that the selection of content for the cover is not simply the most read article of the previous day, but that it is programmed through bots from the editorial policy.

2. Lack of female editors

• There was talk of expelling toxic users and librarians who violate Wikipedia's rules of coexistence.
• It was proposed to establish a support network and conciliatory spaces for editors who receive harassment and hatred when creating articles on Wikipedia.
• It was suggested to implement gender quotas in decision-making spaces such as the Wikipedia librarians group, to ensure the equal presence of women and men, changing the voting process to elect these figures of responsibility.
• There was talk of promoting feminist pedagogy to encourage women and girls to participate in editing Wikipedia and to consider this activity as a form of activism, and explain that Wikipedia is not limited to historical or cultural issues, and that it can be edited by anyone on any topic of interest.
• It was proposed to offer childcare during editatonas to facilitate the participation of women with children.

3. Relevance of women's biographies

• There are differences in the perceived relevance of men's and women's biographies on Wikipedia, as many more references are required for women's biographies than for men.
• Greater transparency was proposed in the relevance criteria and the investigation of how many articles by men without sufficient references are being considered relevant, while for women's biographies their relevance is questioned more frequently.
• The importance of seeking quality references and improving relationships with media and institutions to generate content was commented.
• There was talk of looking for tributes, awards and recognitions to nourish the articles with additional references and avoid the existence of orphan pages, and have photos to illustrate the articles.

4. Categories to make women visible

• The need to ensure a good categorization of articles on Wikipedia, including those that are uncategorized, and teach editors to correctly categorize articles was discussed.
• It was proposed to continue with the creation of categories for women, since they are currently in less quantity than those of men, and to suggest the categories of women when looking for the same category but in male.
• There was talk of organizing special days, known as "categoritatonas", to create new categories since it is a time-consuming job.
• It was proposed to establish clear policies on how to create and organize categories, and change the categorization system to make it easier to search and add words.
• There was talk of the importance of getting gender categorization for wikis that do not currently have it.

> Participation

We have the participation of 31 people, of which the 80% were women, and more than 80% of the attendees were over 35 years of age. Although a large majority was from Madrid, there were participants from three other Spanish cities (Barcelona, Alicante and Valladolid), and from two countries outside Spain: Italy and Portugal. 

As for the organisations present in the meeting, apart from the 12 members of Wikiesfera, there were representatives of three other gender-focused Wikimedia Movement groups as UG Women's Wiki, WikiDonne (Italy) and Fourth Own, as well as from LGBT Wikiproject, or organisations Amical Wikimedia y Wikimedia United Kingdom.

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