User:Markworthen/sandbox/Feminist critique of Wikipedia's epistemology/2nd draft

Introduction

This recondite article may require repeated reading to understand its theoretical basis and recommendations. Nonetheless, the authors' analysis merits careful consideration.

Given the article's abstruse theoretical foundations and arguments, we decided that trying to paraphrase or summarize its content might unintentionally change its meaning and constitute a disservice to the authors. Consequently, in addition to the article abstract, we provide selected quotations below, and encourage interested Wikipedians to read the article in its entirety.

Citation

Menking, Amanda, and Jon Rosenberg. “WP:NOT, WP:NPOV, and Other Stories Wikipedia Tells Us: A Feminist Critique of Wikipedia’s Epistemology.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 46, no. 3 (May 2021): 455–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243920924783

Abstract

Wikipedia has become increasingly prominent in online search results, serving as an initial path for the public to access “facts,” and lending plausibility to its autobiographical claim to be “the sum of all human knowledge.” However, this self-conception elides Wikipedia’s role as the world’s largest online site of encyclopedic knowledge production. A repository for established facts, Wikipedia is also a social space in which the facts themselves are decided.

As a community, Wikipedia is guided by the five pillars—principles that inform and undergird the prevailing epistemic and social norms and practices for Wikipedia participation and contributions. We contend these pillars lend structural support to and help entrench Wikipedia’s gender gap as well as its lack of diversity in both participation and content. In upholding these pillars, Wikipedians may unknowingly undermine otherwise reasonable calls for inclusivity, subsequently reproducing systemic biases.

We propose an alternative set of pillars developed through the lens of feminist epistemology, drawing on Lorraine Code’s notion of epistemic responsibility and Helen Longino’s notion of procedural objectivity.

Our aim is not only to reduce bias, but also to make Wikipedia a more robust, reliable, and transparent site for knowledge production. (Line breaks added to ease online reading.)

Selected Quotes

Two quotes from the introductory pages of the article:

Our purpose here is twofold. First, we use several insights from feminist epistemology to problematize the five pillars, showing how they contribute to the implicit values further excluding women and other marginalized peoples from participating in Wikipedia.

Secondly, we use these insights to reimagine the five pillars, showing how critiques of Wikipedia’s implicit values can be grounded in Wikipedia’s explicit values themselves. In other words, we marshal the resources of feminist epistemology to show that not only is the current structure and makeup of Wikipedia problematic from a general moral and political perspective but also that it is problematic from the perspective of the values Wikipedia explicitly endorses.

Thus, our reimagination of the five pillars is not only theoretically interesting, but it also doubles as the outline of a potential intervention in the Wikipedia community—one that would increase the diversity of content and participation in Wikipedia and, ultimately, provide substantial epistemic benefit to Wikipedia as a knowledge production project.

. . .

This reimagining of the five pillars is not undertaken to criticize the apparent lack of participation in Wikipedia by marginalized communities, but to show it is in the project’s best epistemic interests to narrow this participatory gap.

Comparison between the current five pillars and the authors' proposed revisions

No.	Current	Proposed
1	Wikipedia is an encyclopedia	Wikipedia is an encyclopedic process
2	Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view	Wikipedia is written by an objective community
3	Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute	The integrity of Wikipedia is a function of the size and breadth of its community
4	Wikipedia's editors should treat each other with respect and civility	Editors should be epistemically and discursively responsible
5	Wikipedia has no firm rules	Wikipedia is norm-driven (rather than rule-governed)

Selected quotes about each of the proposed ("reimagined") pillars

1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia → Wikipedia is an encyclopedic process

"... the first pillar can be used—intentionally or not—to exclude individuals from the process whose participation would be epistemically beneficial."

2. Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view → Wikipedia is written by an objective community

Embracing the thesis that knowledge (and knowers) are situated requires us to abandon the idea that points of view can be neutral. Individual epistemic agents are always situated in a sociohistorical context that includes a variety of background assumptions and values. ... instead of grounding the “objectivity” of Wikipedia content in the neutrality or facticity of the content itself, the objectivity of Wikipedia—its distinctive epistemic integrity—should be understood in terms of the kind of community in which it was produced, including the practices and protocols the community elects to enforce.

3. Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute → The integrity of Wikipedia is a function of the size and breadth of its community

"While participation is at least in principle radically open, in practice the cost of participation—the hurdles that must be overcome to participate successfully—may discourage participation by groups and individuals whose influence would be epistemically fruitful."

4. Wikipedia's editors should treat each other with respect and civility → Editors should be epistemically and discursively responsible

"So, the fourth pillar should be reconceived to focus on prescribing behaviors allowing epistemically limited individuals to create a thriving and objective epistemic community."

5. Wikipedia has no firm rules → Wikipedia is norm-driven (rather than rule-governed)

"There may not be an explicit list of rules on Wikipedia itself, but as with any community, there are de facto rules. Rules that are based on what the membership at any particular time happens to enforce—either with or without reflection."

... giving the lack of rules such a prominent place in the framing of Wikipedia’s culture makes it sound as if the whole process is open and accessible while leaving completely uninterrogated the constraints on access and participation that existing community values and background beliefs can produce. ... Wikipedia is neither a free-for-all nor is it a fully articulated rule-based process. It is norm-driven, and the critical contrast between a norm and a rule is that the former is not set in stone. We tend to see norms as being more dynamic than rules; they are subject to interpretation, revision, and judgments about their applicability (or not) to particular cases. ... norms are more flexible than rules and allow for a higher degree of freedom in judgments about their applicability.

Discussion about the article on Wikipedia

The Menking & Rosenberg (2021) article has sparked lively discussion on several talk pages, such as:

WP:5P sidetrack (part II)

• Iridescent remarked: "I think (emphasis on 'think') that 'A Feminist Critique of Wikipedia’s Epistemology' is shorthand for 'A critique of Wikipedia's epistemology using the analytical tools which developed from the feminist movement', rather than 'Speaking as a feminist, this is why I think Wikipedia is wrong'."

• WhatamIdoing explained:

  They believe that Wikipedia's volunteers are richer, whiter, more western, more educated, and from more industrialized, more individualistic, and more democratic societies than the overall world population. (We all agree with them.) They believe that biased people create biased content. (Number of featured pages supported by Wikipedia:WikiProject Football: 274. Number of featured pages supported by Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains: 111. Number of featured pages supported by Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red: 8. Number of featured pages supported by Wikipedia:WikiProject Parenting: 1. Maybe they're right?). ¶ Given these starting beliefs, if you want a less-biased Wikipedia, then you need to widen participation. And that means, among other things, seeking out, encouraging, and supporting newcomers. There are a lot more non-white people, a lot more women, and a lot more people who don't speak English natively with good internet access in 2021 than there were in 2001, or even in 2011. A random internet user has a higher chance of being different from "us" now compared to 10 or 15 years ago. If, on the other hand, we take the traditional California approach of pulling up the ladder behind us, we will not ever have a less biased group, and we will always struggle to create less biased content. Widening participation might get us better content in the end.

See also

The lead author of the article, Amanda Menking, was lead author on another article reviewed by Isaac Johnson in Wikipedia Research Newsletter's August 2019 Special issue on gender gap and gender bias research: "Safety and women editors on Wikipedia".