ABSTRACT

Since early in the development of the project, Wikipedia editors have been concerned with overcoming “systemic biases” in coverage of the world’s knowledge, especially those rooted in forms of social marginalisation. Major campaigns within the Wikipedia community attempt to reverse these disparities, largely by focusing on addressing “gaps” in the demographics of Wikipedia editors and by writing new articles about people and topics overlooked by the encyclopedia. However, many Wikipedia editors and observers have argued that the systemic biases of Wikipedia are inherent to current global distribution of knowledge production, and can only be overcome by changing the encyclopedia’s standards of inclusion.

This article reframes this debate by comparing the project of “countering systemic bias” on Wikipedia with the effort within Western/Northern academia to decolonise and diversify scholarship. Since this project began at least fifty years ago, it has led to abundant peer-reviewed scholarship, all of which qualifies as “reliable sources” for Wikipedia articles. Anthropological scholarship has also overturned the social evolutionary narrative that often shapes popular perceptions of global history. The article proposes that critical scholarship, historical maps, and maps in contemporary scholarship can all contribute to addressing Wikipedia’s systemic biases.

摘要

自该项目的早期发展以来，维基百科编辑一直关注克服世界知识报道中的“系统性偏见”，尤其是那些植根于社会边缘化形式的偏见。维基百科社区内的主要运动试图扭转这些差异，主要是通过专注于解决维基百科编辑人口统计的“差距”以及撰写关于百科全书忽视的人和主题的新文章。然而，许多维基百科编辑和观察者认为，维基百科的系统性偏见是当前全球知识生产分布所固有的，只能通过改变百科全书的收录标准来克服。

本文通过比较维基百科上的“对抗系统性偏见”项目与西方/北方学术界为非殖民化和多样化学术所做的努力，重新构建了这场辩论。自从这个项目至少在五十年前开始以来，它已经产生了大量的同行评审奖学金，所有这些都被视为维基百科文章的“可靠来源”。人类学学术也颠覆了通常塑造大众对全球历史看法的社会进化论。这篇文章提出，批判性学术、历史地图和当代学术中的地图都有助于解决维基百科的系统性偏见。