Page:Wikipedia and Academic Libraries.djvu/129

116 source of information that our patrons, colleagues, friends, family, and acquaintances use.

Wikipedia can be intimidating on first approach. It is an ecosystem where there is no formal authority, contributors need to learn a Wikipedia contributor culture and its rules, as well as learn the technical aspects of contributing. There is a learning curve, but a learning curve that all librarians can easily overcome and help others overcome and engage in their local communities in a way that empowers them to tell their stories. It can also be a space that feels unsafe and hostile for LGBTQ+ contributors, but there is hope. The Wikimedia Foundation has positioned itself as an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. On December 8, 2020, Maggie Dennis (2020), vice president of Community Resilience and Sustainability, speaking on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, wrote “to restate, reinforce, and firmly assert [the Wikimedia Foundation’s] commitment to supporting the LGBTQIA+ volunteers in [the] movement, as well as others who face exclusion and hostility on the basis of identity factors.”

Earlier we saw that the U.S. LGBTQ+ category in WikipédiaFR represents 39.53 percent of all country-specific LGBTQ+ content. It would be interesting to know if this larger representation is also present in transcontinental languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, or Russian, or even in more continental languages such as Dutch, German, or Italian. Perhaps this is simply a phenomenon in the WikipédiaFR, but it is possible it is generalized in other language Wikipedias. A future research project could provide some important insight behind what appears to be an overrepresentation of U.S. LGBTQ+ culture in Francophone Wikipedia.

Wikipedia and the Wikimedia sister projects are trying to create a world in which everyone can share in the sum of human knowledge. Local Queer history and culture has a place in the sum of all human knowledge but is often absent, underdeveloped, or subject to strict rules on notability. However, what is beautiful with Wikipedia is that the content and rules of the project reflect the interest of its contributors. The more people from the LGBTQ+ community that contribute to Wikipedia, in all of its language versions, the more we can close