Page:Wikipedia and Academic Libraries.djvu/40

Rh is left out and who is included in technology industries and digital spaces, to their own work editing Wikipedia.

Representation and Wikipedia

In bringing Wikipedia into the classroom, we did recognize the well-established drawbacks of Wikipedia, particularly in terms of representation (Davidson, 2017; Gauthier & Sawchuk, 2017). We knew that bullying and harassing behavior from some Wikipedia editors has chased women and members of marginalized groups off the platform (Menking & Erickson, 2015; Wulczyn et al., 2017). Rather than treating these as reasons to avoid the platform, however, these issues were part of the course. For example, while talking about online harassment, we also discussed how using the WikiEdu sandboxes to draft their edits was risk-free space for students to learn how to use Wikipedia without worrying about other editors critiquing their works in progress. is also meant they could refine their edits, guided by their instructor, so they felt more confident in them before changing existing articles.

At the end of the semester, students read about gender disparities in who Wikipedia articles are written about (Adams et al., 2019). And by this point, students were able to critique the norms created by “notability” rules, but they were also empowered to work within the rules of Wikipedia to push back on those norms. As one student wrote, “The quality and depth of content on Wikipedia can be improved by having more women and people of color editing articles, and the same can be said for further inclusion and diversity in other areas of cultural work and study.” They also recognized that this was a space they could be part of the change to the culture and perception of Wikipedia.

In this final discussion, students were able to see themselves as shifting whose perspectives are represented in the site, adopting what Lambert (2018) deemed as representational social justice (p. 228). In part because of university/major demographics, half or more than half of the students in the courses were women or nonbinary, and about a third were students of color. Some students made connections between their own subjectivities and the project directly. One student elected to edit an