Despite leading Wikipedia and its parent organization through the past five years, during a time when online disinformation has skyrocketed, outgoing Wikimedia Foundation CEO and executive director Katherine Maher says she’s optimistic about the web resource’s future.
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Maher also explained that despite Wikipedia’s efforts in recent years to grow and diversify its editor and contributor community, only 18 per cent of the site’s notable biography pages are about women. Maher tied the figure to a 2015 London School of Economics study that found media outlets cited men as expert sources five out of six times, a pattern that stunts the public record of women experts and leaders.
To address this gap, Maher said one of Wikimedia Foundation’s policy targets for 2030 is around knowledge equity, an initiative to map and fill gaps in Wikipedia’s knowledge base. Maher said the foundation offers grants to support this work. “What are the ways in which we can support communities in really thinking about proactively redressing gaps and exclusion that have both been structural because of lack of access to time, electricity, computers and also intentional and cultural aspects of power?”
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
