Program/Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory: Raising Awareness and Providing Solutions for Bridging Knowledge Gaps
- Format
Poster
- Keywords
- cultural diversity
- datasets
- interlanguage collaborations
- data visualization
- wikiresearch
- ubuntu
- When and where
- Friday 20 July, 20:00 - 21:30
- Plenary hall
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- Presenter(s)
- Topic area
- Relationship to theme
Language & literacy
Content Quality
Participation & representation
Knowledge forms
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Abstract
It is extremely difficult to change the conditions which would allow editors from all countries to contribute to Wikipedia, and therefore increase the cultural diversity of the project. Nonetheless, I believe we can certainly spread the existing cultural diversity across language editions and reduce the content culture gap (articles about one culture that exists in their local language but not in others). In this sense, I present the grant awarded project "Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory" (WCDO), aimed at raising awareness and providing solutions for interlanguage collaboration.
In this research project I initially explain how the content of each language edition is skewed toward the cultural and geographic context associated with its own language, and does not cover enough of the other languages contexts. WCDO aims at correcting the underrepresentation by providing focused datasets (Cultural Context Content datasets for each Wikipedia language editions), graphical visualizations and strategic recommendations for cross-language collaboration, so that each language edition will have a truly international representation of the world's knowledge.
As a solution to improve these knowledge gaps, WCDO wants to provide specific lists of top priority articles for each language edition that should be in every other language editions. This way it would be possible to have a minimal intercultural coverage. It is my desire that in the same way that the gender gap has created a united movement, the cross-language collaboration projects (Intercultur, the Catalan Culture Challenge, Wikimedia CEE, etc.) will do the same in order to be more effective in ensuring content diversity in each Wikipedia language edition.
This presentation is related to my PhD thesis and the project WCDO: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Wikipedia_Cultural_Diversity_Observatory_(WCDO)
Outcomes
- Raise awareness on the importance of cross-language collaboration as a complementary strategy to increase Wikipedia content diversity.
- Learn about how their peers ready represent their cultural contexts (what topics, how important it is) in the different Wikipedia language editions they contribute to.
- Discover the extent of the content culture gap for some specific less known languages and visualize it.
- Learn more about the current projects that fostering cross-language collaboration and see how they can prioritize for certain content gaps.