Wikimedia Product/Perspectives/Trust/Accountability

Accountability

Summary

A key factor in building and maintaining trust is holding ourselves accountable for the human dynamics in our Movement and on our platform. That is, in the coming years, we must not only recognize the various ways that bias undermines the growth of our Community, we must also actively cultivate trust-building practices across cultures, within communities and between individuals. This is a strategic imperative because only by examining our assumptions, behaviors and norms (as a mostly northern, mainly western, largely male movement) will we be capable of recognizing all possible forms of knowledge, expertise and notability.  To this end we must develop facility with navigating between the cultural, social and transactional factors that foster or undermine trust. Accountability must become a pillar of this socio-technical platform, built by the Movement, modeled by the Foundation, and maintained by each Community and contributor.    

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