Citizen: Whose knowledge counts?

Context:

You have been invited to join a university course on activism. As part of this, students and community members are invited to a Wikipedia edit-a-thon to improve representation of underrepresented communities. 

Dilemma:

A) Join and help change the narrative, giving visibility to stories that might otherwise remain untold. However, this demands time and navigating strict Wikipedia rules.

B) Join the course, but do not contribute with article writing.

Story behind the dilemma:

While Wikipedia offers free, comprehensive knowledge and democratizes information creation, its editing ecosystem reveals deep inequalities. Dominated by white male editors, the platform underrepresents women's biographies and marginalizes indigenous knowledge. Aggressive gatekeeping and consensus rules often reinforce dominant Western perspectives. Feminist edit-a-thons have emerged as transformative interventions, training participants to create content about underrepresented groups and challenge systemic biases. However, fundamental epistemic injustices persist in determining what counts as "credible" knowledge. Wikipedia thus remains both a groundbreaking tool for information equity and a reflection of society's broader knowledge power imbalances.

Resources:

• https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1254006.pdf