Events

Wikipedia is a worldwide collaborative encyclopedia project made up of a globalized network of volunteers who give their time to edit the site. Within this globalized network, there still lacks a diversity of voices. “In a 2011 survey, the Wikimedia Foundation found that less than 10% of its contributors identify as female; more recent research puts that number at 16% globally and 23% in the United States.”  (Mandiberg, M., Prajapati, S., & Schrock, R., 2020). Who contributes to a database matters. Especially when in 2015, that database was “the 7th most visited website in the world” (Paling, E., 2015). A 2011 study from the Pew Research Center, shows that “the more educated someone is, the more likely he or she is to consult Wikipedia. Almost 70 percent of Americans with college degrees read Wikipedia” (Paling, E., 2015). If college-educated people and students are using Wikipedia as a main source of information, there is an argument for students learning how to edit and contribute to the online encyclopedia that they use.