Queering Wikipedia 2020/gender tagging

Title:

Sex and gender tagging in Wikipedia and Wikidata

Theme:

content quality

Type of session:

presentation

Abstract: This session will review Wikipedia's practices for tagging sex and gender on biographies.

There is a huge challenge in media which Wikipedia has realized but the rest of the world has not: when and how can anyone do sex and gender tagging of people?

From one perspective, there is a huge demand for gender tagging in Wikipedia. Activist efforts which already do this include Art+Feminism, which seeks to create biographies of female and non-binary artists; Women in Red, which seeks to create biographies of women mostly by profession and region; various female scientist projects seeking to showcase women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and the other Wikimedia community efforts which address the gender gap. Similarly in the LGBT+ space, there is interest in tagging sex, gender, and sexuality for similar motivations, including to present the accomplishments of LGBT people in society. Seeing underserved demographics is useful, and in the Wikipedia community we have consensus to do this.

We have several challenges in this space. One is a wish to preserve individual privacy. For various reasons, some people, even those who might be public figures in the media, might not want to have gender and sexuality categorization in Wikipedia. Another challenge is that Wikipedia maintains its quality with citations to reliable sources, and in many cases, the only way we could do sex and gender tagging is with original research. A third challenge is producing best practices for how other people in Wikipedia and elsewhere will reuse these tags, including in Wikipedia projects such as Art+Feminism, Women in Red, efforts to create biographies of women scientists, or any similar projects which we might want to do to improve biographies for LGBT+ people.

Attendees of this talk will get an orientation to sex and gender tagging, including what it is, why it matters, and how to explain it to other people.

Author name:

Lane Rasberry - but please help present this or even take the lead!

user:Marajozkee

E-mail address:

lane@bluerasberry.com

Wikimedia username:

user:bluerasberry

Affiliated organization(s):

School of Data Science at the University of Virginia

Estimated time:

any is acceptable; 20 minutes minimum; 60 maximum

Have you presented on this topic previously? If yes, where/when?:

Wikimedia New York City events

If your submission is not accepted, would you be open to presenting your topic in another part of the program? (e.g. lightning talk or unconference session)

yes