Proposal:The community of editors should reflect the population they come from
Every proposal should be tied to one of the strategic priorities below.
Edit this page to help identify the priorities related to this proposal!
- Achieve continued growth in readership
- Focus on quality content
- Increase Participation
- Stabilize and improve the infrastructure
- Encourage Innovation
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Summary
Wikipedia is a young white men's game.. particularly for the big "first world" Wikipedias like the nl en de fr. The countries where these languages are the official language, you find that there typically large populations from elsewhere. They are likely to have an interest in other subjects then just the "national" history. For them the history of the people, the country they come for is important and consequently, the coverage of these people and countries should be good.
Proposal
The chapters should be aware of this and make it a priority. For the question how other demographies can be attracted to become involved in their Wikipedia will not be always the same. It may also mean that bigotry by some will need to be overcome. For instance when Turkish is the most spoken second language in a country, the chapter should actively support Turkish and Turkish subjects in their national language.
Motivation
Often the people who do not have a long history in a country, are not involved in intellectual pursuits, while they do have the intelligence for it. By stimulating the subjects about their culture, we make Wikipedia more relevant to them. We are likely to grow the readers who are interested in this. This may lead to editors who share that interest.
Key Questions
What articles are people looking for. How do you make sure that these articles have the right quality and, how do you get a good collaboration between a Wikipedia and the "foreign" wikipedia.
Potential Costs
Growing a more multi cultural Wikipedia editing community requires that existing bias is understood to be problematic. Getting to this realisation can be and is likely to be painful.
When we truly want to represent "all" knowledge in all our Wikipedia, we need to be open to other communities. Making this plain can be achieved and imho it is worthwhile to experiment with this.
References
- GerardM blogged about this.
Community Discussion
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