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Despite all the differences that separate a bustling Asian metropolis and Anytown, U.S.A, humanity has a few common shared interests: pop culture, sex and ... geography.

This is according to data from Wikipedia, the crowd-edited encyclopedia thats one of the most popular websites in the world. The site is visited by more than 1 billion devices a day, according to the companys internal data, and it offers more than 41 million articles in more than 200 languages.

But despite that breadth of subjects, there are a few topics that are particularly popular across the globe.

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Among English-language articles, pop culture-related entries make up slightly more than 40% of page hits for the top 100 pages. That was also the most-popular category for Chinese-language (also slightly above 40%) and Japanese-language pages. Pop culture was by far the most dominant category in Japan, accounting for almost 80% of the page hits for the top 100 pages.

If you know Japan, that shouldnt surprise you, said Jimmy Wales, Wikipedias co-founder.

While pop culture ranked as one of the most in-demand categories on Wikipedia across regions, it was less popular elsewhere. In France and Germany, it was second to geography; nearly 40% of the top 100 pages in German were related to that topic.

Im not sure thats a good thing, Wales joked of Germanys keen interest in the rest of the globe.

Geography was also the top topic in Russian-language Wikipedia entries, followed by sex-related topics.

In fact, sex ranked as a major area of interest across regions, though not to the extent it was in Russia. It was the sixth-most popular topic in English and German-language pages, and the third-most popular on Chinese and Japanese pages, although it comprised a small percentage in Japan.

There are two languages where sex doesnt appear as a favorite topic: French and Spanish.

This confused me at first, Wales said, until it was explained to me that the French and Spanish are actually having sex, while the rest of us are just reading about it.

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Despite the ubiquity of Wikipedia, Wales acknowledged that these results could be skewed given certain biases in who writes and edits the site.

While anyone can make changes or submit new articles, 87% of the contributors are male. We do consider that a problem. Its something we would really like to change, Wales said. We know that people write about things theyre passionate about, and there is a gender component to that.

He noted that entries about award-winning female authors tended, on average, to be shorter than ones about award-winning male authors.

Its not that the contributors are overtly sexist, but due to issues outside Wikipedia, their interests arent necessarily consistent, which shows up on the site. He added that some women may be put off from contributing by the dominance of male contributors. We want to make sure that women arent being excluded by badly behaving men in the community, he said.

Wales spoke at the Morningstar Investment Conference, and focused his talk on the spread of free information. He noted that Wikipedia recently encrypted its programming as a security measure, prohibiting spying governments, for example, from seeing which specific article a reader was viewing.

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Previously, governments could have banned specific articles on Wikipedia, while leaving others accessible. The move to encryption forced them to decide whether to block the whole site or allow readers full access. Every country opted to allow Wikipedia, with the sole exception of China, Wales said.

It sounds like a paradox, he added, but encryption led to the spread of free knowledge.

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Sex, pop culture and the other most popular Wikipedia topics by language - MarketWatch

Image via Wikimedia Commons/Francesa Lissoni

In 2011, asurvey report by the Wikimedia Foundationput numbers behind what many had long suspected: Wikipedia is largely the product of cis white men.

The survey found that only 8.5 percentof Wikipedia editors identify as female, and less than 1 percentas transgender. The startling report echoed the conclusions of researchers at the University of Minnesota, who found that this lack of diversity among editors creates noticeable content disparities: Wikipedia articles on topics that are typically gendered as feminine tend to be shorter and less developed than articles on subjects related to men, and women artists are less likely to have lengthy, in-depth entries on Wikipedia.

More recently,The Atlanticreported onmale editors harassing female colleagues, and noted that many women feel unwelcome due to content thats hostile toward them. (Movie entries, for instance, often refer to rape scenes as sex scenes or even making love.)Meanwhile, internal efforts at Wikipedia to fix the gender gap have, by admission of the sites own founder,completely failed.

And gender imbalance isnt Wikis only problem.

The racial demographics of Wikipedia editors remain under studiedthe Wikipedia page for Wikipedians doesnt address race at all under its demographicssectionwhich is itself rather alarming. But the Wikimedia report does note that Wikipedia editors are disproportionately from countries in the Global North, largely North America and Europe.

Content disparities further suggest that editors often overlook the narratives of people of color. Wikipedia lacks entries for many notable people of colorfor example, only nine of Haitis 37 first ladies have Wikipedia articles, whereas all 45 first ladies of the United Stateshave entries. Similarly, the entry for theHistory of Montana(with 90 citations) is far longer and more thorough than that oftheHistory of Botswana(3 citations). Other prominent people of color lacking Wikipedia articles includeJudy Juanita, a novelist and playwright who served as editor in chief of the Black Panther Party newspaper in the late 1960s;Milton Allimadi, publisher and CEO of TheBlack Star News; and Zambian-born writer and graphic novelistEfemia Chela, who was nominated for The 2014 Caine Prize For African Writing.

Considering that Wikipedia receives273 million page views perday, these disparities matter, ensuring that a large swathe of the population is exposed to a very limited view of the world.

Fortunately, activists are working to correct this lack of representation by writing women and people of color into Wikipedia.

It may seem counterintuitive to use Wikipedia as a platform for activism. After all, according to the sites owncommunity guidelines, articles must be written from a neutral point of view and shouldavoid advocacy.But given the sites popularity and crowdsourcing model, its also an ideal way to broaden the artistic canon that so often excludes women andpeople of colorespecially in the current political climate.

In 2014, Wikipedias potential as a tool for change inspired a group of artists, academics, and activistsSin Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, Michael Mandiberg, and Laurel Ptakto launch Art+Feminism, an organization dedicated to increasing the visibility of marginalized artists by expanding and adding Wikipedia entries related to feminism and the arts.

Since then, Art+Feminism has been working to reshape Wikipedias demographics and content by hosting edit-a-thons, events that encourage people of all genders to edit the site. In the last three years, Art+Feminism has hosted more than 280 events around the world, welcoming anyone and everyone interested in learning more about editing Wikipedia, regardless of experience, gender, or background.

The organizations founders believe that editing Wikipedia can be an empowering act. Mandiberg, who had taught Wikipedia editing to his students at CUNY, found that collaborating on editing stubsunderdeveloped articles lacking citations and detailed informationwith experienced Wikipedians showed students just how valuable their knowledge could be to a wide community of readers.

Art+Feminism event in Lima, Per (Image via Wikimedia Commons/Lapalabranecesaria)

This March, I attended Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at the Modern Museum of Art Archive andLibrary in New York, where community membersmost of them womengathered for a day of trainings and panels. Throughout the day, volunteers from Interference Archive, a group that studies how art and culture intersect with social movements, andAfroCrowdand Black Lunch Table, organizations that host Wikipedia Edit-a-thons focused on increasing the visibility of black people and people of African descent, led break-out sessions and discussions.

Arriving in the librarys airy lobby, I registered, made a name tag, and picked up a badge showing a version of the woman power symbol with the raised fist wielding a paintbrush, then joined the other attendees loitering by the coffee stationmost of whom were women.

Most of the people I met at the edit-a-thon, like me, had never edited Wikipedia before. Many seemed to have arrived almost by chance;one student told me shed decided to join the event after attending a panel on feminism the previous week.Later, I spoke with an illustrator who had spotted the event on Facebook, or maybe Eventbrite. Many of the women I met with told me they were seeking out new forms of activism in the months following the election and the Womens March. Darla Elsbernd, an architect who I spoke with during lunch, told me, It seemed to be the right time to take action and get involved in a meaningful way. This idea was echoed in a statement from Art+Feminisms current lead coordinators, Evans, Mabey, Mandiberg, and Mckensie Mack, who told me:

When you have a government actively pushing alternative facts, improving the reliability and completeness of Wikipedia is an important act of everyday resistance. And people seem to recognize this and responded to our call to action.

I was surprised to discover that many of the event participants, including Art+Feminism co-founder SinEvans, were librarians. Academics often regard Wikipedia with suspicion, and many students are taught never to use it. (In high school and college, I had been vehemently warned away from Wikipedia by teachers, librarians, and professors.) But many librarians and academicsat least those involved with the edit-a-thonexpressed a different view.

As I sipped my coffee at the event, I found myself chatting with Helen Lane, an Emerging Technologies Librarian at the Fashion Institute of Technology, who uses Wikipedia to teach students how to conduct research and think critically about sources. Lane asked, What better way to teach research and critical thinking skills than to have students research and write articles that require citations from verifiable sources and which undergo a very public peer-review process?

Art+Feminism event in Taiwan (Image via Wikimedia Commons)

In the past two years, Lane has hosted two edit-a-thon events at FIT, one inspired by Art+Feminism and one officially affiliated with the organization. Her aim in hosting the events, she said, was to encourage our mostly female student body to engage with technology. Lane values Art+Feminisms mission, in part, because her work as a librarian has shown her how gender bias has historically led to the devaluation of fields like fashion history. She explained:

It was considered, until a few decades ago, a frivolous, feminine topic not worthy of academic pursuit. This could even be seen in the collection policies of major university libraries. Why hold on to old copies of Vogue? Be sure to weed out the old books on beauty when the featured makeup trends pass. In the case of fashion and costume history, however, I think that academia is ahead of Wikipedia in its serious coverage of the topic.

Wikipedias crowdsourcing model gives it the potential to cover topics that have been marginalized in traditional academia. Unfortunately, as Lanes comments on fashion history show, that potential remains largely unfulfilled. Wikipedias gender gap has led to the replication of gender biases in academia and traditional publishing on Wikipedia. During the training session I attended, Evans explained that community guidelines ask editors to flag and delete entries that do not adequately cite third party sources that are considered reliableand even on Wikipedia, reliable generally means mainstream. As a result, entries for women and minority artists who have not been reported on by mainstream publications or referenced in multiple peer-reviewed works are at risk for deletion.

At the same time, some argue that Wikipedias anonymous, crowdsourcing model is detrimental to the work of women and minority scholars. Lane told me:

The most resistance I have received at FIT to my involvement with Wikipedia Edit-a-thons has come from an individual who had to fight to be recognized as a scholar of merit because she was a woman and because her field of research is costume and textile history. She is deeply offended by the idea that anyone can write for Wikipedia and that the entries are anonymous, because she feels that it undermines the work of women who are fighting to be recognized as authorities and scholars. I actually understand where shes coming from. Its too bad she wont join us. We could use her knowledge.

I have to wonder if Lanes colleague has a point; too often, in academia and in so many other aspects of our society, the contributions of women and people of color go unnoticed or overlooked. Its a privilege to be able to afford to volunteer ones work (and editing Wikipedia articles certainly is work) without any kind of recognition. And yet, Im also drawn to the notion that Wikipedia can be a platform that makes the stories of marginalized people more visible.

Art+Feminism is still growing and developing as an organization. In a joint statement, the organizations lead coordinators told me, We believe that feminism is praxis, ideas enacted as an everyday ethical practice, and part of that practice is constant reflection. The organization is committed to intersectional feminism, and this year, with the support of a $100,000 grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, it has expanded its leadership team with the intention of becoming more international and inclusive. Consultants Daniela Capistrano and Brittany Oliver are working with Art+Feminism to improve outreach to queer communities and communities of color across the United States,and Art+Feminism now has project ambassadors based around the United Statesand in Ghana, Peru, Canada, and Europe.

There is no doubt in my mind that edit-a-thons are making a positive mark on Wikipedia. Over 2,500 participants at more than 200 events around the world participated in Art+Feminisms fourth annual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, creating or improving nearly 6,500 articles on Wikipedia, almost twice the output of the 2016 events.

Though anyone with an internet connection can edit Wikipedia, such events create a sense of camaraderie and purpose among individuals who might not otherwise become Wikipedians. Wikipedias power as a tool for activism lies in its crowdsourcing model. As Art+Feminisms lead coordinators told me, Wikipedia is something that belongs to all of us.

This piece is published in partnership withThe Establishment.

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How Activists Are Diversifying Wikipedia One Edit At A Time - GOOD Magazine

"All revolutions go down in history, yet history does not fill up," observes French theorist Guy Debord in his 1989 book Panegyric. Unbound by print, Wikipedia's infinite pages might be the perfect medium to record thatboundless history.The ubiquitous, free online encyclopaedia was born of the information revolution, and has transformed our access to knowledge. But its launch in 2001 also coincides with the heightened era of global terrorism since 9/11. Consequently Wikipedia operates amid competing forces: the desire to free knowledge versus a culture of mass surveillance.

In 2013 those forces collided. Edward Snowden's bombshell revelations that the US government's National Security Agency indiscriminately tracks and records the metadata of millions of innocent citizen's phone calls, emails and web searches sent a shockwave around the world.

It had a direct effect on what people were searching on Wikipedia. A study published by the Berkeley Technology Law Journal found traffic to Wikipedia articles related to terrorism fell by nearly 30 per cent after Snowden's whistleblowing.

This isn't necessarily a good thing. As Snowden himself warns in the 2015 Academy Award-winning documentary Citizenfour: "[When people] are careful about what they type into search engines because they know it's being recorded that limits the boundaries of their intellectual exploration."

Wikipedia agrees. "The right to information and right to freedom of expression are fundamental human rights and we'll stand by and defend those values," says Katherine Maher, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation that operates Wikipedia. "Knowledge is so fundamental to allowing us to make decisions that empower and fulfil us as individuals."

In March 2015, the San Francisco-based Wikimedia Foundation filed a lawsuit challenging the NSA's"dragnet surveillance", along with other defendants. In October 2015, the lawsuit was dismissed, but appealed in December 2016 and awaits a ruling.

For many years this democratic ideal of free-knowledge-for-all was the driving force behind the internet. Not anymore, says Maher, who is a keynote speaker at Melbourne Knowledge Week discussing the future and importance of free knowledge.

"The internet is increasingly a highly commercialised place where privacy is illusory, where platforms and information tend to be highly concentrated, where information is algorithmically presented to you with tremendous bias based on what it is you looked at last. The internet is no longer a free and open space."

Wikipedia, however, resists advertising and relies totally on some 2.5 million global donors to survive.

"Wikipedia is one of the remaining free and open spaces on the internet," says Maher, who has a background in IT and advocacy with international development organisations UNICEF, The World Bank and Access Now. "What we stand for is not just Wikipedia, but the open ecosystem of free information across the world. The need for us to create information. The need for inquiry. The need for sharing. The need for transparency and accountability. The need for presentation and celebration of languages and cultures. That's not the internet."

But what about threats to free speech from other governments? Don't countries like Russia and China censor Wikipedia or block access to it? "It's less common than you might imagine," says Maher. "If governments try to get us to take information down, we don't. We have very strong encryption technology that means that if you choose to block Wikimedia [sites] you block 'all of it' or 'none of it'. We found most places in the world choose 'none'."

Established in 2003 the non-profit Wikimedia foundation has a staff of 277 that operates the technology behind the Wikimedia sites, including the Wikicommons with 35 million free images, Wikinews and Wikipedia.

Typically, criticismof Wikipedia is over how totrust a free site that relies on editors and volunteers around the world to supply its information.But it's trust and transparency that Maher perceives as its strongest selling point. Indeed, a visitor to the site can pore over past edits and explore updates, changes and misinformation.

Since Wikipedia's inception, the scribes documenting world history in a neutral, apolitical style have been correcting errors and contending with trolls, pranksters and hoaxers. Fake news isn't new, says Maher. Disinformation, propaganda and yellow journalism are fake news by another name, she says.

Critics argue that unlike venerable encyclopaedias such as Britannica, Wikipedia articles lack consistent depth. Maher says they are rectifying this, particularly the content's white male bias.

"We realised a few years back that of all the biographies on English Wikipedia, only 16 per cent were about women. That's out of more than 1.3 million biographies. So that in and of itself is an opportunity to think about how we write in the remaining 34 per cent [of the female population]."

Increasing its international language versions is also a priority.

To a cosy First World audience, Maher's refrain that "knowledge is power"can sound like a shop-worn Enlightenment slogan. Maher cautions against such cynicism.

"The biggest threat to free information is ourselves," she declares. "We forget how valuable knowledge is to the development and furthering of our society. Accuracy of information, continued inquiry, this has always propelled us forward. If we lose value and appreciation for that, then some of the other structures start to crumble."

Meanwhile, in remote Utah, the NSA has built a new $2 billion data storage facility that records another more personal history. As Wired writer James Bamford describes, "Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches." It offers a dark spectre to Wikipedia's ambitions. Surveillance history does not fill up either. If we allow it.

Democratisation of Knowledge with Katherine Maher, Melbourne Knowledge Week, May 1, 7.30pm-9pm. A live stream is available: https://www.facebook.com/KnowledgeMelbourne/

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Wikipedia's Katherine Maher on free knowledge in the age of mass surveillance - The Sydney Morning Herald

Jimmy Wales, founder of the user-edited online encyclopedia Wikipedia, pauses during an interview with Reuters at the Israeli Presidential Conference in Jerusalem October 21, 2009. Ronen Zvulun / Reuters

The initial goal is to raise sufficient funds to hire 10 professional journalists. The website is set up to encourage supporters to give $10 a month, but the amount and frequency of gifts can easily be modified.

The online proliferation of fake news, some of it generated for profit and some for political ends, became a major topic of angst and debate in many developed countries during last year's U.S. presidential election.

Charlie Beckett, media professor at the London School of Economics, welcomed Wikitribune as an attempt to tackle a lack of public trust in mainstream media, but questioned whether it would have the scale and reach to stem the flow of fake news.

"The kind of people who will pay attention to Wikitribune and contribute to it are people who are already pretty media-literate," he told Reuters.

Wales argued in his video that because Internet users expected news to be free, news sites were reliant on advertising money, which incentivised them to produce "clickbait" rather than quality output.

He also said social media networks, where an ever-increasing number of people get their news, were designed to show users what they wanted to see, confirming their biases.

The Wikitribune website said articles would be authored, fact-checked and verified by journalists and volunteers working together, while users would be able to flag up issues and submit fixes for review.

Beckett said journalists could benefit from tapping into expertise or information held by readers, but said this was already being done by many mainstream media. He also said it was not a miracle remedy against inaccuracy.

"There's nothing magical about being a citizen. As a citizen you have your own bias and prejudice and experience as well," he said.

Excerpt from:
Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Launches Project to 'Fix the News' - NBCNews.com

The Hindu

AIADMK feud spills over to Wikipedia The Hindu The Wikipedia page of the AIADMK was blocked from further editing on Thursday after a spurt in activity on the page with the section on office-bearers edited multiple times during the day, particularly with reference to V.K. Sasikala and O. Panneerselvam. AIADMK feud spills onto Wikipedia, names of gen secy, leader changedDeccan Chronicle Too many edits on AIADMK page, Wikipedia blocks further editsOneindia all 23 news articles »

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AIADMK feud spills over to Wikipedia - The Hindu