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Peter Gallert (PhD Candidate)
Principal supervisor : Prof. Heike Winschiers-Theophilus, Namibia University of Science and Technology

Say it to my face. Co-designing a Wikipedia for an indigenous community.

Wikipedia’s presentation of human knowledge is the result of the work of a surprisingly small and homogeneous group mainly from the Global North. Indigenous communities are not contributing, possibly because their knowledge is not maintained by reading and writing. This poses two challenges: First, the world does not obtain knowledge from these communities via its ubiquitous encyclopedia, and second, indigenous languages often do not have any native language encyclopedia. Current research activities have stopped short of investigating interface changes and cultural adaptations to gain and retain Wikipedia editors from the Global South. Through participatory action research I attempt to co–construct a Wikipedia language edition that better mirrors the knowledge representation of an indigenous community. Measuring editing activity on this prototype shall show if a culturally ‘closer’ Wikipedia can be the way to tackle the mutual apathy.