How academic institutions can help address Wikipedia's biases

With over 250 million views each day, Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world and is also an invaluable educational resource. Today, the English language Wikipedia holds over 1.5 million biographies, yet only about 19% of them are about women. This gender gap reflects the biases of Wikipedia's volunteer editors as well as the world's systemic inequalities. Who edits Wikipedia truly matters: while anyone can edit Wikipedia, only about 20% of editors self-identify as female. Editors also face recurring challenges including difficulties in meeting Wikipedia's notability criteria for scientists and academics and finding freely licensed photos of scientists, as well as navigating higher rates of deletion for pages of women and LGBTQ+ folks. While Wikipedia is propelled through grassroots efforts by design, institutions can play a crucial role in furthering equity on the encyclopedia. In this talk, I will discuss what institutions can do to address Wikipedia's biases and will ask the DFD2022 audience to join a collective effort to improve the pages of fluid mechanicists, especially those from groups traditionally underrepresented in science.