Why Edit Wikipedia?Wikipedia is the largest and most comprehensive encyclopedia in the world. Its success is well documented. With roughly 40 million articles written in 293 languages, the platform beats its nearest competitor, Encyclopedia Britannica (online) with 85 times the number of words.
The nature of the platform has contributed to its exponential growth. Wikipedia, unlike scholarly encyclopedias, allows anyone (even you!) to edit or create new articles and publish them immediately without peer review. While that might raise concerns around accuracy, studies have shown that Wikipedia is on par with peer-reviewed encyclopedias, and that vandalism (editing an article with the intent of spreading misinformation) is corrected quickly.
And yet, as of 2023, only 19% of biographies on Wikipedia were about folks who identify as women. How can this be?
A 2023 study of Wikipedia editors suggests it is editorial bias at work. only 11% of Wikipedia's editors identify as women. What's even more troubling is there has been little statistical analysis of racial bias and representation on Wikipedia.
Image: Divya Mehra, Dangerous Women (Blaze of Glory), 2017.
