Submissions:2019/What's neutrality?: An epistemological discussion about advocacy and free knowledge in Spanish Wikipedia

This submission has been noted and is pending review for WikiConference North America 2019.

Etherpad

Title:

What's neutrality?: An epistemological discussion about advocacy and free knowledge in Spanish Wikipedia

Theme:

Reliability of Information

Type of session:

Presentation

Abstract:

What motivates a person to edit about climate change, feminism, heritage, among other topics, in Spanish Wikipedia? Communities edit Wikimedia projects because they think certain topics matter. If the very election of a theme is a political stand by itself –because we are actively deciding what's worth preserving– , can the production of knowledge still be considered as 'neutral' from an epistemological standpoint?

This issue is particularly relevant in the Global South, due to some problems such as lack of references or "unreliable" sources. The goal of this presentation is to discuss if the use of es.wiki projects for advocating can still be reliable, and how we should be moving from a so-called 'neutrality' approach into an accountability perspective. I'll show some examples of people using es.wiki projects to make visible certain topics (hence, taking a non-neutral approach) by creating high-quality content and helping to "fill the gap" in knowledge production without compromising the rigourosity of the encyclopedia.

Academic Peer Review option:

No

Author name:

Pepe Flores

E-mail address:

pepe.flsgmail.com

Wikimedia username:

padaguan

Affiliated organization(s):

Wikimedia Mexico

Estimated time:

30 minutes

Preferred room size:

30-40 persons

Special requests:

None

Have you presented on this topic previously? If yes, where/when?:

No, but it's the byproduct of several discussions during Wikimania 2019

If your submission is not accepted, would you be open to presenting your topic in another part of the program? (e.g. lightning talk or unconference session)

Yes