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WP:NPOV, WP:NOT, and Other Stories Jimmy Wales Told Me: A Feminist Critique of Wikipedia's Epistemology
Amanda Menking & Jon Rosenberg @amandamenking [email protected]
• Adrianne Wadewitz
• A brief overview of Wikipedia
• The Five Pillars
• Learning from feminist epistemologies
• The Five Pillars reimagined
• Potential interventions
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Delete. I was shocked and saddened by her death, and yes, I'd like for her various and valuable contributions to be recognized and memorialized. That said, the best way that we as a community ought to do this is to uphold the sort of work that she did, which includes maintaining high standards for our content. Those high standards exclude the article about her as a person, but they're a good memorial of her as a Wikipedian. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 17:09, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
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Delete. I was shocked and saddened by her death, and yes, I'd like for her various and valuable contributions to be recognized and memorialized. That said, the best way that we as a community ought to do this is to uphold the sort of work that she did, which includes maintaining high standards for our content. Those high standards exclude the article about her as a person, but they're a good memorial of her as a Wikipedian. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 17:09, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
Delete. I believe that awadewit was an incredibly valuable Wikipedia editor, and I cried buckets when I learned of her death. However, her academic career was in its youth and was not that remarkable. Her primary claim to notability is as a Wikipedia editor and activist, and I believe it is an inherent COI for Wikipedia to put up articles recognizing its prolific contributors. […] Even if we consider Wikimedia a reliable source, this is incredibly circular - Wikimedia talks lots about a topic, a third-party source picks it up, and now it is all of a sudden notable? I don't agree. I do not agree that Wikipedia editing is grounds for conferring notability […] I do not agree that Wikimedia activism is grounds for notability […] With all due respect to awadewit's memory, I do not believe she was notable....and I don't think she would have considered her life to be worthy of an article here either. Karanacs (talk) 21:44, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
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Delete. I was shocked and saddened by her death, and yes, I'd like for her various and valuable contributions to be recognized and memorialized. That said, the best way that we as a community ought to do this is to uphold the sort of work that she did, which includes maintaining high standards for our content. Those high standards exclude the article about her as a person, but they're a good memorial of her as a Wikipedian. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 17:09, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
Delete. I believe that awadewit was an incredibly valuable Wikipedia editor, and I cried buckets when I learned of her death. However, her academic career was in its youth and was not that remarkable. Her primary claim to notability is as a Wikipedia editor and activist, and I believe it is an inherent COI for Wikipedia to put up articles recognizing its prolific contributors. […] Even if we consider Wikimedia a reliable source, this is incredibly circular - Wikimedia talks lots about a topic, a third-party source picks it up, and now it is all of a sudden notable? I don't agree. I do not agree that Wikipedia editing is grounds for conferring notability […] I do not agree that Wikimedia activism is grounds for notability […] With all due respect to awadewit's memory, I do not believe she was notable....and I don't think she would have considered her life to be worthy of an article here either. Karanacs (talk) 21:44, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Delete. I'm with WWGB, Bretonbanquet, and Tarc on this. I don't see how contributing to Wikipedia makes anyone notable, and as an academic, she fails WP:SCHOLAR big time. There is absolutely nothing in the article or sources that make her out to be anything other than an average, unremarkable scholar whose hobby was editing Wikipedia. While her contributions to the project are appreciated, article space is no place for a eulogy. 71.139.142.132 (talk) 03:44, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
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Delete. I was shocked and saddened by her death, and yes, I'd like for her various and valuable contributions to be recognized and memorialized. That said, the best way that we as a community ought to do this is to uphold the sort of work that she did, which includes maintaining high standards for our content. Those high standards exclude the article about her as a person, but they're a good memorial of her as a Wikipedian. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 17:09, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
Delete. I believe that awadewit was an incredibly valuable Wikipedia editor, and I cried buckets when I learned of her death. However, her academic career was in its youth and was not that remarkable. Her primary claim to notability is as a Wikipedia editor and activist, and I believe it is an inherent COI for Wikipedia to put up articles recognizing its prolific contributors. […] Even if we consider Wikimedia a reliable source, this is incredibly circular - Wikimedia talks lots about a topic, a third-party source picks it up, and now it is all of a sudden notable? I don't agree. I do not agree that Wikipedia editing is grounds for conferring notability […] I do not agree that Wikimedia activism is grounds for notability […] With all due respect to awadewit's memory, I do not believe she was notable....and I don't think she would have considered her life to be worthy of an article here either. Karanacs (talk) 21:44, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Delete. I'm with WWGB, Bretonbanquet, and Tarc on this. I don't see how contributing to Wikipedia makes anyone notable, and as an academic, she fails WP:SCHOLAR big time. There is absolutely nothing in the article or sources that make her out to be anything other than an average, unremarkable scholar whose hobby was editing Wikipedia. While her contributions to the project are appreciated, article space is no place for a eulogy. 71.139.142.132 (talk) 03:44, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia• Co-founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger
• One of the largest reference websites, attracting 374 million unique visitors monthly as of September 2015*
• 70,000+ active contributors working on more than 35,000,000 articles in 290 languages*
• The Wikimedia Foundation or WMF (a.k.a. the Foundation)—based in San Francisco—is the organization that owns the domain wikipedia.org. It is an organization that raises money, distributes grants, develops software, deploys software, controls the servers, and does outreach to support Wikimedia projects, including the English Wikipedia.
6* About Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About
Scholarship/Activism• “…evidence hinting at a culture that
may be resistant to female participation.” (Lam et al., 2011)
• “…high barriers exist for new viewpoints to be accepted in Wikipedia, even if they objectively contain useful information.” (Flöck et al., 2011)
• “Can Wikipedia’s vision, access to the sum of human knowledge, go beyond tolerance and liberalism and actively support Indigenous knowledges as ways of life?” (van der Velden, 2013)
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The Five Pillars of Wikipedia• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
• Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view.
• Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute.
• Editors should treat each other with respect and civility.
• Wikipedia has no firm rules.
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The Five Pillars of Wikipedia• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
• Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view.
• Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute.
• Editors should treat each other with respect and civility.
• Wikipedia has no firm rules.
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Learning from Feminist Epistemologies: Knowledge is situated (KS)
“[S]ubjects creating scientific knowledge are located – historically, geographically, socially – and […] their locatedness must be taken seriously. … [I]ndividual knowers are […] conditioned by various aspects of their social location.” (Longino 2002;107)
Location includes: funding dependence, intellectual lineage, family, class, race, and gender
Key features:~ Millian lineage of democratic free speech ~ Empiricist ~ Grounded in an account of evidential relations themselves ~ Located individuals combined with procedural account of objectivity ~ Rejection of the unconditioned subject and value-neutrality of inquiry
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Learning from Feminist Epistemologies: Process oriented (PO)
“[T]his new position moves away from a concentration upon products, end-states of cognition. It turns […] to an examination of process […] It does so from a conviction that concentration upon products restricts the possible results of enquiry [sic] …” (Code, 1987;8)
Problems with products: abstracts epistemic subjects in a way that precludes them from substantive epistemic scrutiny; grants unwarranted finality to the “end” products of cognitive activities
Key features:~Species of “realism” ~Responsiblist/virtue epistemology~Sensitive to issues of epistemic and hermeneutical [in]justice
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Critiquing the Five Pillars• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
• Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view.
• Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute.
• Editors should treat each other with respect and civility.
• Wikipedia has no firm rules.
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Critiquing the Five Pillars• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
• Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view. (KS)
• Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute.
• Editors should treat each other with respect and civility. (KS)
• Wikipedia has no firm rules.
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Critiquing the Five Pillars• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. (PO)
• Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view.
• Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute. (PO)
• Editors should treat each other with respect and civility.
• Wikipedia has no firm rules.
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The Five Pillars Reimagined• Wikipedia is an essential part of the encyclopedic
process.
• Wikipedia is written by an objective community.
• Wikipedia is free content; its integrity is a function of everyone using, editing, and distributing it.
• Editors should act with epistemic and discursive integrity.
• Wikipedia is norm-driven rather than rule-governed.14
Potential Interventions• How would Wikipedians redesign Wikipedia if they
accepted our reimagined pillars?
• How would readers perceive the value and validity of Wikipedia content if each article page displayed polyvocality?
• How would readers perceive the value and validity of Wikipedia content if they could view a visualization of each talk page discussion?
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Amanda Menking & Jon Rosenberg @amandamenking [email protected]
Thanks!
Questions, comments, compliments, or criticisms?
