Francophone Diversity on Wikipedia: Workshop Summary at the WikiConvention francophone 2024

Written by Sabrina Mac Gregor and Nathalie Casemajor

On November 3, 2024, approximately fifty people participated in the workshop Savoirs pluriels : wikifier les critères d’admissibilité, organized as part of the WikiConvention francophone in Quebec. The workshop was co-hosted by Catherine Bernier (BAnQ/Wikimedia Canada), Sven Buridans (FCCF), Nathalie Casemajor (INRS), Frédérique Dubé (Projet Collective), and Sabrina Mac Gregor (INRS).

In the first part of the workshop, the INRS team shared initial results from the research project Protocoles éditoriaux et pluralisation culturelle des savoirs sur Wikipédia (Editorial Protocols and Cultural Pluralization of Knowledge on Wikipedia), in collaboration with Wikimedia Canada. This project explores governance policies and practices concerning interculturality on Wikipedia. In the second part, teams from BAnQ, FCCF, and Projet Collectif presented several cases illustrating the challenges of gaining recognition for the eligibility and notability of Quebecois and Franco-Canadian articles on French Wikipedia. The slides from the workshop are available on Wikimedia Commons.

Following the presentations, a collaborative workshop helped to identify additional cases of articles facing eligibility challenges on Wikipedia. Discussions highlighted several solutions to enhance representation of content related to nations, territories, or francophone cultures that are lesser-known or underrepresented in the Wikimedia movement. Below is a summary of these discussions.

The main causes of conflict

Approximately forty articles were identified as having sparked editorial conflicts. These articles came from Quebec, Franco-Canadian communities, Europe, Africa and even Latin America. They demonstrate a diversity of issues related to various geographical, socio-cultural and linguistic contexts. We have grouped these issues into the following categories.

SOURCES
– Reliability of sub-national sources: sub-national sources are often perceived as less reliable or insufficient, leading to the suppression of many articles on regionally relevant topics.
– Lack of secondary, focused sources: several articles were rejected for lack of sources demonstrating substantial treatment of the main topic in the form of analysis or synthesis.
– Recognition of oral sources: this type of source is very important in Indigenous projects such as Wikipetcia Atikamekw; but in the French Wikipedia, oral sources are hardly recognized as legitimate.

THE FRENCH LANGUAGE AND ITS GEOGRAPHICAL VARIATIONS
– Use of different terms in different territories: national and territorial variations in the French language fuel terminological disputes, particularly over the choice of article titles or specific terms. A notable example is that of the disc used in field hockey, called “rondelle” in Quebec and “palet” in Europe; the talk page for this article was the scene of lively debates on the terminology to be preferred.
– Questioning the principle of least astonishment: linguistic and cultural differences within the French-speaking world generate tensions. Their arbitration by the principle of least astonishment reveals the centrality of the perspective from France in the French-speaking Wikipedian community. In 2021, contributors from France accounted for almost three-quarters of all contributors (71% according to stats.wikimedia.org), and half of all readers (54%). This over-representation on the scale of the French-speaking world exacerbates conflicts over perspectives from outside France.

GEOPOLITICAL DIMENSIONS
– Representation of territorial conflicts: articles dealing with regions in conflict or sensitive historical contexts led to debates on point-of-view neutrality (WP:NPOV).
– Visibility of under-represented regions: contributors from French-speaking minority communities or from French-speaking countries outside Europe pointed to a lack of recognition of their specific cultural contexts.

TAKING INTO ACCOUNT SPECIFIC CULTURAL CONTEXTS
– Eligibility and notoriety: the general criteria under these two policies are often perceived as inadequate for assessing content linked to specific cultural realities (different from the French model), or for recognizing the relevance of certain subjects that are less widely known. These criteria, designed to be applied universally, can overlook regional or local particularities and exclude content that is nonetheless relevant.
– Diversity of knowledge: the standardized frameworks of the Wikipedian project pose obstacles to the integration of knowledge from diverse perspectives, such as Indigenous knowledge. Certain practices and modes of knowledge transmission are frequently dismissed because they do not conform to the encyclopedia’s universalizing standards.

Recommendations and solutions

We asked people to discuss possible solutions as a group, and to formulate recommendations to the issues raised. Here are the results of those discussions, which reflect a desire on the part of the community to improve the fairness of the encyclopedia’s editorial criteria and the recognition of local knowledge, in order to promote the diversity of voices within the Wikimedia movement.

RETHINKING RELIABILITY: INTEGRATING THE DIVERSITY OF SOURCES
– Create a space to reference and contextualize subnational sources according to their demographic and geographic scope;
– Set up a verification committee for sources with regional expertise;
– Conduct cross-sectional surveys of the local press to identify reliable local media and carry out targeted analysis;
– Train admins and patrollers in source diversity issues;
– Improve flexibility in the admissibility of sources, including oral ones, when they are essential to specific communities or regions.

BEYOND NOTORIETY, OR REDEFINING CONTENT QUALITY
– Develop notoriety and eligibility criteria adapted to the specificity of different territories;
– Include local voices in eligibility debates;
– Value the expertise of contributors with territorial ties or in-depth knowledge of the subject.
– Recognize local knowledge and include sources deemed reliable by the communities themselves;
– Redefine the notion of “quality” in order to assess the importance of subjects beyond notoriety.

BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN COMMUNITIES AND ADMINISTRATORS
– Increase the representation of administrators from regions under-represented on Wikipedia;
– Develop clear guidelines for diversifying content;
– Establish a code of conduct to facilitate exchanges between administrators, contributors and communities on intercultural issues;
– Create an arbitrator role to manage intercultural disputes in a structured way and enforce the universal code of conduct.

PROTECT KNOWLEDGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION AND PUT AN END TO AUTOMATIC DELETIONS
– Create an observer role to monitor article deletions;
– Publish an annual report on article deletions;
– Move deleted articles to a draft area to preserve the work accomplished;
– Organize workshops to train new contributors in the draft process and deletion issues.

TECHNICAL PROPOSALS
– Create a database of sources and include statistics on their use;
– Use Commons to record oral sources;
– Strengthen synergies with Wikidata to evaluate the notoriety of personalities and sources (e.g. media description sheet);
– Fund more local projects.

These possible solutions, sketched out during the workshop, are an invitation to further reflection to identify which would be the most desirable, feasible and priority to contribute to a greater cultural plurality of knowledge within the Wikimedia movement.

Inspiring initiatives on Wikipedia

L’Observatoire des sources: index of sources that have been the subject of discussion within the Wikipedian community as to their quality and use in encyclopedic articles.

Projet Sources/Médias africains: this page provides information on the scope and reliability of African media, with a view to facilitating their consideration in debates on the admissibility of African topics, and presenting an overview of the source situation in these countries.

Projet Suisse/Admissibilité: this page presents the eligibility criteria for pages related to Project:Switzerland, based on a consensus reached within the project.

Projet Croissant Boréal: the aim of this project is to coordinate the editing and enhancement of articles relating to the Boreal Crescent territory, a geographical area comprising the regions of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Nord-du-Québec and northeastern French-speaking Ontario.

WikiCite: an initiative to create a bibliographic database based on Wikidata.