Who Counts as a Notable Sociologist on Wikipedia? Gender, Race, and the “Professor Test”

Abstract

This paper documents and estimates the extent of underrepresentation of women and people of color on the pages of Wikipedia devoted to contemporary American sociologists. In contrast to the demographic diversity of the discipline, sociologists represented on Wikipedia are largely white men. The gender and racial/ethnic gaps in likelihood of representation have exhibited little change over time. Using novel data, we estimate the "risk" of having a Wikipedia page for a sample of contemporary sociologists. We show that the observed differences (in academic rank, length of career, and notability measured with both H-index and departmental reputation) between men and women sociologists and whites and nonwhites, respectively, explain only about half of the differences in the likelihood of being represented on Wikipedia. The article also enumerates both supply-and demand-side mechanisms that may account for these continuing gaps in representation.

The Most Important Laboratory for Social Scientific and Computing Research in History

“…3 Some recent projects have also begun to unpack the "gap" by looking at the ways in which it emerges. 4 Although this follow-on work presented a range of different estimates of the scope of the gap in participation between male and female editors, none of the work overturned the basic conclusion that Wikipedia's editor base appears largely, if not overwhelmingly, made up of men.…”

Visibility Layers: A Framework for Facing the Complexity of the Gender Gap in Wikipedia Content

“…The gender distribution of biographies has also been compared with the gender distribution of actual social groups. For example, one study compared U.S. sociologists with their Wikipedia record and found that men are twice as likely as women to have a biographical article (Adams et al, 2019), which confirms the coverage asymmetry's relevance.…”

“…Editors maintain the possibility to propose the deletion of articles, which initiates an internal process of debate (called 'Article for Deletion' discussion) that can lead to four outcomes: the article is kept, deleted, merged with another, or redirected to another (Taraborelli & Ciampaglia, 2010). Studies that have tested gender trends in this process have found no systematic asymmetries: there are no more deletions of content about women or more nominations to remove content about women (Adams et al, 2019;Worku et al, 2020). This suggests that the main challenge for female representation is in the original selection process and not in this subsequent review stage.…”

Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces: Wikipedia as a Tool to Decolonize the HSI Classroom

“…Some inaccurate information has, of course, been added to Wikipedia, but most of these falsehoods are removed shortly after being published on the site (Halavais, 2004). The more legitimate, consequential biases on Wikipedia instead are those that reflect the limited and/or missing content and the narrow range of editors of the pages (called Wikipedians; Adams et al, 2019). The major culprit stems from systemic bias in Wikipedia.…”

“…The major culprit stems from systemic bias in Wikipedia. Wikipedia's content is reflective of a racial and gender bias in the significantly lower rates of participation on the site as editors by women and people of color (Adams et al, 2019;Lim & Kwon, 2004;Racial Bias, 2020). The typical Wikipedian is a white, educated male from a middle class background (Systemic Bias, 2020).…”