Wikipedia Diversity Observatory/Glossary

This page presents the different types of diversity that will be studied in the future by the Diversity Observatory project, which, in short, it is a content diversity analytics project.

To achieve more diversity in content and fight for knowledge equity, it is necessary to represent all the different 1) places (geographical entities), 2) peoples (gender, sexual orientation, religious groups, ethnic groups, and indigenous group), 3) cultural concepts for each group of people and place, and 4) languages (national, indigenous and marginalized) of the world in Wikipedia.

To do so, it is necessary to define the these categories, understand the type of gaps that are created, create or identify the tools to make a cartography with these gaps and engage in the community initiatives to bridge them.

Geography

Definition:

Geography is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of the Earth and planets. The Earth is politically divided in continents, subcontinents, countries and regions.

Type of Gap:

The geography gap manifests itself mainly by a lack of articles about specific geographical entities (whether they are continents, countries, etc.) in most of the Wikipedia language editions. The geography gap can be visible through the analysis of articles with geolocation or those including Wikidata properties related to location.

Tools:

• Diversity Observatory tools and visualizations (Geography Gap, Diversity Over Time).

Community Initiatives:

Any Wikimedia online event like Asian Month, African Month, etc.

Gender

Definition:

Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e., the state of being male, female, or an intersex variation), sex-based social structures (i.e., gender roles), or gender identity.

Type of Gap:

The gender gap manifests itself mainly by a lack of articles (biographies) about women in most of the Wikipedia language editions when compared with articles about men. There is also a gender bias when certain gender unrelated topics (e.g. history or sports) refer or link to more men biographies than women to illustrate the points.

Tools:

• Wigi http://wigi.wmflabs.org/ (to measure the content gender gap over time.)

• Denelezh https://www.denelezh.org/ (to measure gender gap by year of birth, occupation, among others.)
• Diversity Observatory tools and visualizations (Diversity Over Time, Last Month Pageviews, Gender Gap)

Community Initiatives:

Any by the Women in Red, WikiDonne, Les sans pagEs, among others.

Ethnic Groups

Definition:

An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other, usually on the basis of presumed similarities such as common language, ancestry, history, society, culture, nation or social treatment within their residing area.

Indigenous peoples are "those ethnic groups that were indigenous to a territory prior to being incorporated into a national state, and who are politically and culturally separate from the majority ethnic identity of the state that they are a part of”.

In English Wikipedia there are lists of indigenous peoples and contemporary ethnic groups.

Type of Gap:

The ethnic groups gap manifests itself mainly by a lack of articles (biographies) about ethnic groups in most of the Wikipedia language editions. There is also a gap in articles about the culture of these ethnic groups (e.g. their language, traditions, etc.). There are gaps in many ethnic groups but those regarding the indigenous groups are more present.

Tools:

Currently not available.

Community Initiatives:

There exists several events dedicated to specific ethnic groups like for the Romani people (Roma day).

Sexual Orientation

Definition:

Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. LGBT (or GLBT) is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.

Type of Gap:

The sexual orientation groups gap manifests itself mainly by a lack of articles (biographies) about those people with a different sexual orientation than heterosexual in many Wikipedia language editions. There is also a gap in knowledge about the topics that relate to LGTB.

Tools:

Currently not available.

Community Initiatives:

There are user groups and events dedicated to LGTB like Wikimedia LGBT+ and Queering Wikipedia Conference.

Religious Group

Definition:

Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements. Every religion is organized as a group practice, and a religious denomination is a subgroup within a religion that operates under a common name, tradition, and identity.

Type of Gap:

The religious groups gap manifests itself mainly by a lack of articles about people coming from every religion in every Wikipedia language edition. There is also a gap in knowledge about the topics that relate to every religion.

Tools:

Currently not available.

Community Initiatives:

Not known.

Language Cultural Context Content (Local Content)

Definition:

The language cultural context are all those concepts (people, places, things or ideas) that relate to the territories where the language is spoken as native or with official legal status. In Wikipedia, Cultural Context Content is often known as local content, and it can be about very specific historical periods, folk, traditions, language, events, biographies, politics, geography, etcetera.

Type of Gap:

The culture gap manifests itself mainly by 1) a lack of representation of topics of a language cultural context in its language edition and 2) the lack of sharing or coverage of articles in other language editions that represent their cultural context. For each Wikipedia language edition, its Cultural Context Content occupies from 10% to half of its content. Nonetheless the content dedicated to the other language editions corresponding cultural context content tends to be very unequal and there are many cultural contexts uncovered.

Tools:

Diversity Observatory dashboards (Cultural Context Content (CCC), Cultural Gap (CCC Coverage and Spread, Last Month Pageviews, Diversity Over Time) and tools (Top CCC Diversity Lists, Common CCC, Missing CCC, Visual CCC, Incomplete CCC, Search CCC).

Community Initiatives:

All the initiatives dedicated to geography, ethnic groups, religious groups improve the culture gap.

Languages

Definition:

• A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with people and the territory they occupy.
• A minoritized languages is a language that is marginalized, persecuted or banned. Minoritized languages are typically restricted to a smaller range of domains than dominant languages, and frequently one-way bilingualism develops when speakers of minoritized languages learn the dominant language, but not vice versa
• An indigenous language or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous people.
• A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory.

Languages can be classified in these categories. While national languages are majority languages and sometimes indigenous, very often indigenous languages are spoken by a minority and are minoritized.

Type of Gap:

The language gap manifests itself in a lack of a Wikipedia language edition for all the languages that are spoken in the world. Depending on the language status (e.g. minoritized), the number of speakers (e.g. a minority or a majority of the population), among other factors, it will be more difficult to engage speakers into becoming contributors. It is necessary to understand every linguistic situation.

Tools:

Diversity Observatory tools and dashboards.

Community Initiatives:

There exist initiatives to engage in the creation or proposal of new projects (through a language committee), groups to protect Wikimedia Indigenous Languages and edit-a-thons on indigenous languages.