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Exploring Systematic Bias through Article Deletions on Wikipedia from a Behavioral Perspective

Authors:

David W. McDonald,

Mark ZachryAuthors Info & Claims

OpenSym '20: Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Open Collaboration

Article No.: 13, Pages 1 - 22

https://doi.org/10.1145/3412569.3412573

Published: 14 October 2020 Publication History

Abstract

The gender gap in participation on Wikipedia is well established. The impacts of the participation bias on content may be expressed through a number of different behaviors. This research considers potential content biases that may result from efforts to delete content. We collect deletion data on a sample of article pages selected based on a method designed to identify content of likely interest to a specific group of people; men and women in this case. The analysis illustrates that there does not appear to be a systematic bias resulting in more deletions or nominations for deletions against content of likely interest to women. We consider how these results improve our understanding of bias and the ways peer production systems can mitigate the potential for biases.

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Cited By

Konieczny PLewoniewski W(2024)Quantifying Americanization: Coverage of American Topics in Different WikipediasSocial Science Computer Review10.1177/0894439323122016542:4(977-996)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/08944393231220165
Centelles MFerran-Ferrer N(2024)Assessing knowledge organization systems from a gender perspective: Wikipedia taxonomy and Wikidata ontologiesJournal of Documentation10.1108/JD-11-2023-023080:7(124-147)Online publication date: 5-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-11-2023-0230
Ferran-Ferrer NBoté-Vericad JMinguillón J(2023)Wikipedia gender gap: a scoping reviewEl Profesional de la información10.3145/epi.2023.nov.17Online publication date: 16-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.nov.17
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Exploring Systematic Bias through Article Deletions on Wikipedia from a Behavioral Perspective
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
    1. Collaborative and social computing systems and tools
    2. Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

OpenSym '20: Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Open Collaboration

August 2020

149 pages

ISBN:9781450387798

DOI:10.1145/3412569

General Chair:
Gregorio Robles
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
,
Program Chairs:
Klaas-Jan Stol
University College Cork, Ireland
,
Xiaofeng Wang
Free University of Bolzen-Bolzano, Italy

Copyright © 2020 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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TJEF: The John Ernest Foundation

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 14 October 2020

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OpenSym 2020

OpenSym 2020: 16th International Symposium on Open Collaboration

August 25 - 27, 2020

Virtual conference, Spain

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OpenSym '20 Paper Acceptance Rate 12 of 21 submissions, 57%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 108 of 195 submissions, 55%

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Cited By

Konieczny PLewoniewski W(2024)Quantifying Americanization: Coverage of American Topics in Different WikipediasSocial Science Computer Review10.1177/0894439323122016542:4(977-996)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/08944393231220165
Centelles MFerran-Ferrer N(2024)Assessing knowledge organization systems from a gender perspective: Wikipedia taxonomy and Wikidata ontologiesJournal of Documentation10.1108/JD-11-2023-023080:7(124-147)Online publication date: 5-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-11-2023-0230
Ferran-Ferrer NBoté-Vericad JMinguillón J(2023)Wikipedia gender gap: a scoping reviewEl Profesional de la información10.3145/epi.2023.nov.17Online publication date: 16-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.nov.17
Ferran-Ferrer NBoté-Vericad JMinguillón J(2023)Wikipedia gender gap: a scoping reviewEl Profesional de la información10.3145/10.3145/epi.2023.nov.17Online publication date: 16-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.3145/10.3145/epi.2023.nov.17
Damadi MDavoust A(2023)Fairness in Socio-Technical Systems: A Case Study of WikipediaCollaboration Technologies and Social Computing10.1007/978-3-031-42141-9_6(84-100)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42141-9_6

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