Decolonising knowledge/Wikimania 2025

Please use the etherpad during the event to add your suggestions, ideas, experiences and examples! https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/decolonising

Roundtable Decolonising knowledge on Wikipedia at Wikimania Nairobi.

8 August 2025, in Nairobi and online.
Presentation of the roundtable.
Expected output: collecting experiences, examples and recommendations to expand and scale our practices.

Methods

Draft. Please add your examples, methods, approaches.


Area	Methods	Examples
Authors	Involving larger and diverse communities.	Noircir Wikipédia in Switzerland https://noircirwikipedia.org
	Involving and recognising the contribution of African descent.	Afro Free Culture Crowdsourcing Wikimedia (AfroCROWD) is an initiative which seeks to increase awareness and the number of people of African descent who actively partake in the Wikimedia and free knowledge, culture and software movements
	Involving international experts in reviewing articles (in the discussion page or externally, without intervening directly on Wikipedia).	Experts involved in reviewing Wikipedia articles related to the South African primary school syllabus Research:Wikipedia Primary School SSAJRP programme/Review
	Facilitating offline contributions.	Wikifundi https://www.wikiinafrica.org/project/wikifundi/
	Training for new authors.
Sources	Analysis of sources (diversity, balance, frequency, language).
Sources	Oral sources.	Research:Oral Citations to help overcome a lack of published material in emerging languages on Wikipedia (2011)
GLAMs	Involvement of GLAMs with their images and sources.
	Involvement of specific exhibitions and projects focussed on colonisation and decolonisation.	Decolonising knowledge in Switzerland (2024-2025)
	Involvement of international specialised researchers / experts in the field from different universities.
Content	Identifying knowledge gaps.
	Analysis / review of specific articles: identifying issues / problems related to international perspective, neutrality, balance, historiographical approach...
	Focusing on biographies from specific countries or areas.	Wiki Loves Women by Wiki in Africa https://www.wikiloveswomen.org/
	Focusing on heritage, landmarks and critical topics of specific countries or areas.	Climate justice with a focus on Latin America Justicia climática y proyectos Wikimedia
	Focusing on specific relevant (and critical) articles.
	Language	Language Justice by Whose Knowledge https://whoseknowledge.org/initiatives/language-justice/
	Events (edit-a-thon and training) to intervene on specific relevant articles.
Data	Analysing and redefining property, item and categories	Decolonizing structured data by Whose Knowledge https://whoseknowledge.org/resource/dti-structured-data-report/
Data	Adding the names used and recommended by communities on Wikidata
Images	Analysis of images already used: how appropriate the images are.
	Removing racist images from articles, contextualising images or removing images.
	Focusing on producing images of specific countries or areas.	Wiki Loves Africa https://www.wikilovesafrica.net/
	Adding information to images
Grants	Supporting specific areas and countries.
Forking	Establishment of new projects based on existing content.	EcuRed - a Cuban perspective on the world and history
Discussions	Discussions about decolonising knowledge on Wikipedia.	Podcast Whose Knowledge https://podcast.whoseknowledge.org/ WikiAfrica Hour
Discussions	Publications

Context

Draft. Please add your perspective.


Weaknesses	Strengths
Conservative communities Consolidated policies and practices Geriatric hierarchy Biographies on Wikipedia are a complicated topic Unbalanced communities, with contributors concentrated in a few areas of the world and with rather homogeneous profiles. Diverse volunteering opportunities in the world, related to income, social background and education.	Ideal of universal knowledge. Ideal of collaborative knowledge. Ideal of a "neutral point of view". Increased awareness about the topic. Multilingual projects and communities. Edit button. Historiographical approach very pertinent on Wikipedia. Already large involvement of GLAMs. Involvement of exhibitions.
Risk	Opportunities
Upload of content from major GLAMs (limited diversity)	Capacity of Wikipedia of influencing knowledge (access, visibility, reuse by humans and machines) - importance of directly intervening on Wikipedia. Possibility of contributing in different ways; directly (becoming a contributor, try the edit button) and indirectly (reviewing content, providing feedback on other websites/platforms, making content accessible with compatible open licenses); using different languages and formats such as writing, images, graphic design, citations...