Wikipedia Diversity Observatory/Maturity Levels
A maturity model assesses qualitatively the situation and barriers an organization comes across in order to succeed at developing a particular aspect. In this case, we are going to propose a maturity model for Wikipedia communities to achieve cultural diversity in their language edition’ contents. In this model wvery Wikipedia language community needs incorporating discourse, organization (events and tools), awareness (metrics and visualizations) and strategy (goals and priorities).
Maturity Levels for Cultural Diversity in Wikipedia language communities
The model contains five levels, in which each of them shows a community which adopted a greater degree of maturity and a better situation and development. The differences between the levels are based on the observation of the actual communities. The number of levels and specific characteristics are borrowed from a User Experience Model (Keikendo).
The different sorts of barriers and levels are based on the discussions with the communities at International venues, while the different incorporated elements in the pursuit of cultural diversity are propositions on our own. They are named: Unintentional, Spontaneous, Organized, Controlled and Distributed.
The more a community moves towards the later levels, the more it implies it is able to create a better array of contents (or closer to the sum of human knowledge in terms of cultural diversity) and at the same time contribute to others’ languages contents.
Being mature at cultural diversity implies that, first, you represent your cultural context properly (e.g. cities, monuments, leaders, etc.) and, second, you are able to spread it as well as covers others’ cultural context content related to the rest of Wikipedia language editions.
Let us have a look at the five levels and the best tools for working through them.
How mature is your Wikipedia community when it comes to cultural diversity contents?
Unintentional
For communities at this level, cultural diversity is not even a goal or a subject up to discussion. At this level, editors try to cover the basic knowledge an encyclopaedia should have based on a Western perspective. Then, cultural diversity is based on the superficial knowledge a basic encyclopaedia provides including world capitals, most spoken languages, etcetera.
Incorporated elements:
None.
Situation:
Few editors translating main encyclopaedic articles (New York, Mona Lisa, etc.) from bigger language editions. They do not cover their own cultural context.
Barriers:
The lack of community critical mass because of the barriers to contribute (lack of Internet).
Sometimes lack of self-recognition or the value of the own language or culture.
Sometimes policies restrict certain types of contributions.
Sometimes lack of translation tools from other languages’ to theirs.
Among others.
Community example: Zulu, Tsonga and other African languages.
Spontaneous
At this level, it is easy to argue the community exists and several editors work on different aspects. Cultural diversity is an implicit goal in the creation of an encyclopaedia. Most editors start to create articles about their most nearby places and people, as they consider it valuable to the readers. There is no plan.
Incorporated elements:
- Discourse: editors recognize the value of representing their cultural context and of translating articles from others’.
Situation:
Editors create lists of monuments and popular writers because they think they deserved an article and eventually represent their cultural context. There is no conversation on how to organize the community to be more efficient or to cover what is necessary from their own cultural context or others’. All contributions are spontaneous.
Barriers:
The lack of editors in order to organize Wikiprojects and contests.
The lack of a team that may be able to work offline and coordinate events.
Community example: Maltese, Walloon, Icelandic, among many others.
This is a common and usual level for most of the communities.
Organized
At this level, there emerge few people within the community that are focused on community building. It is possible that some of them have a good picture of the contents missing in the encyclopaedia, as well as those related the territories related to the language and general cultural diversity. With these few editors efforts and external support from the Wikimedia Foundation, there is the chance to organize events.
Incorporated elements:
- Discourse: editors recognize the value of representing their cultural context and of translating articles from others’ and the need to develop some organization to do it.
- Organization: some events are dedicated to represent their own heritage (e.g. Wiki Loves Monuments), to spread it across other languages (e.g. Catalan Culture Challenge), and to cover other languages’ cultural context (e.g. Asian Month).
Situation:
Editors are organized and the community has capacity to focus on milestones (specific goals). It is possible that some editors are solely dedicated to cultural diversity but have no way to understand the big picture. The use of translation tools is common and very useful.
Barriers:
The lack of measurements and tools in order to be aware of the situation, organize better and prioritize actions.
Community example: Catalan Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, etcetera.
Controlled
Communities at this level have different roles: event organizers, content experts and international relations. They are able to organize contests and all sort of events with other language editions in order to exchange their articles and mutually benefit the diversity in their corresponding languages. The content expert has gained awareness of the exact knowledge gaps: which languages and countries they are related to.
Incorporated elements:
- Discourse: editors consider the big challenge it is to cover others’ cultural diversity and they want to find more effective ways to do it.
- Organization: the previous types of events and contests remain as important but newer ones involving article exchange across language editions at a regional level are more valuable in order to ensure the cultural diversity (e.g. Wikimedia CEE Spring contest organized by eastern and central european languages).
- Awareness: the use of metrics to gain understanding of the situation is in incipient. It is useful in order to know the extent of the own cultural context content (% of articles), and the knowledge gaps.
Situation:
The community is consolidated and part of the global movement. Editors know how activities in different areas (education, GLAM, etc.) are carried out in their community as well as in others. The need for higher control over the creation of content implies that few editors disseminate metrics on the own cultural context representation and the culture gaps.
Barriers:
Few editors access the metrics that depict the state of cultural diversity in their contents. With no regularity on the measurement and communication with the entire community it may become anecdotal.
Community example: Ukrainian Wikipedia, Serbian Wikipedia, etcetera.
Distributed
Cultural diversity has reached a top priority as a way of having the best possible Wikipedia language edition. The community counts on different area experts (events, metrics, communication, etc.) and knows how to propose reasonable goals and organize themselves do it. The degree of coverage of other cultures is common knowledge across the community and editors are aware of the main needs. Cultural diversity has dedicated events and contests and is also a recurring requirement for other contests based on general topics (e.g. Women, Art, Books, etcetera.).
Incorporated elements:
- Discourse: editors know that their language edition covers the main informational needs on cultural diversity but aim at representing the entire world cultural diversity at a greater detail, for instance, including the different marginalized communities.
- Organization: the community sets goals in their strategic plans in order to ensure the coverage of particular topics or world areas necessary for a wider cultural diversity in their contents.
- Awareness: the use of metrics and indicators is common and editors empower themselves by knowing the gaps and the impact of their work. Metrics and data visualization are accessible to all editors and with a certain frequency (e.g. in Monthly monitoring newsletter and Cultural Diversity Observatory dashboards).
- Strategy: cultural diversity is distributed and assumed by all the community members as a value. Some specific goals are set assisted by lists of priority articles (e.g. Top CCC articles list computer-generated by the Cultural Diversity Observatory).
Situation:
Discourse, organization, indicators and strategy are completely aligned in creating content that represents the existing world cultural diversity. The community has a strong culture in addressing knowledge gaps and every member is able to find the events and resources to do it. The metrics assessing the extent of the gaps are constantly visible in the different types of community communications that reach the entire group, and the use of tools to browse valuable articles is common.
Community example: None yet.
Maturity in communities progresses one level at a time. If a community is at a spontaneous level it will not be able to skip ahead to control without moving through organized, gaining the necessary community capacity. Each level requires knowledge, skills, organization and some processes that need to be learn.
In the very first level (unintentional) it is clearly visible that some barriers are hard to overcome and are more related to the contextual factors that makes a voluntary online project like Wikipedia hard to get established. This is the case of global south and marginalized languages in general, which are deeply affected by the digital divide. At the moment no Wikipedia community has reached the fifth maturity level as the tools and the indicators are in development. Nonetheless, with some effort, many communities among the first 100 language editions in terms of number of articles could be in the fourth maturity level.
Conclusions
We believe that the more raised awareness on the situation of cultural diversity in general and the more usable the tools become, the easier it will be for more communities to embrace these values and practices. In the end, cultural diversity is a core value of the global movement. Other knowledge gaps such as the gender one constitutes an important challenge to communities. In some cases, there is more maturity in the discourse and in the community organization than on cultural diversity. Although the barrier to gender gap is sometimes a matter of notability policy definition and some members internal bias, the final picture is easier to imagine: the 50-50 equality in biographies is something clear. Instead, the final picture for the culture gap is more difficult to envision.
In fact, it is hard to work on topics hard to identify, with different levels of importance and access to sources in foreign languages. The tools, events and metrics are essential in order to provide editors the specific point to address the cultural diversity or culture gap problem and have more impact in their contributions. In the near future I hope to enquiry the communities in order to obtain feedback and understand better the barriers the separate one level from another. The use of a survey would be helpful in order to obtain data and refine the model at the same time of disseminating it. This maturity model for cultural diversity in Wikipedia communities is useful as a working vision in order to progress with specific and attainable steps.