Wikimedia Product/Perspectives/Trust/Accountability

Summary
To create an environment where all contributors are held accountable, we need to challenge the existing status quo of the Wikipedia community. “Assume good faith” is a core pillar but is not always practiced, and bias may show up in the form of unconscious habits and routine enforcement of policy. Also at odds with “assume good faith” is the reality that governments, businesses, and other real-world (bad faith) figures in power may have an interest to create their own truths, and there's plenty of evidence that along with the other major platforms, Wikipedia is also open to sophisticated interference and subtle content manipulation. Similarly, paid editing is another very real concern of the Wikipedia community who want to maintain a high standard for content neutrality. Wikipedia content is more-or-less accurate because of the open review processes and because the tools encourage construction over destruction. These systems work for content that the existing content reviewers can easily familiarize themselves with, but to support the arrival of emerging communities and more regional content the existing notability paradigm must be challenged and extended to ensure that editors are making contextually appropriate decisions on the accuracy of new content. These are significant challenges to overcome. Wikipedia policies on notability and deletion are well calcified and, short of legally threatening situations, the Wikimedia Foundation has historically taken a hands-off approach. It's time to re-examine this posture, to consider new models for accountability, new policies for notability, and new standards for usability.

White Paper
[link to paper coming soon]

Resources
H. Ford, 2013, Getting to the source: where does Wikipedia get its information from? https://drive.google.com/open?id=1i3NkQatHG7mR7InP-iGomJi__4H5hpm6

A. Menking, 2015, The Heart Work of Wikipedia: Gendered, Emotional Labor in the World’s Largest Online Encyclopedia, https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ahvgXf-knzaEE-YTiIQbKL-9W046r4Ki

M. Redi, 2018, What are the ten most cited sources on Wikipedia? Let’s ask the data. https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/04/05/ten-most-cited-sources-wikipedia/

A. Shaw, 2018, The Pipeline of Online Participation Inequalities: The Case of Wikipedia Editing https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B500zraS_1RvOVBXanNHb3VUYU9jM2Z0ei02MHJPTG5wY1RJ

A. Shaw, 2014, Mind the skills gap: the role of Internet know-how and gender in differentiated contributions to Wikipedia https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B500zraS_1RvR0RhOG1MYjRCWkxDNEN6NjZ6Mjk5RDlWUTI0