A Wiki Education course went awry last month when controversy over a deletion discussion spilled onto Twitter, leading to harassment of a 15-year-old editor. The course, Black Women and Popular Culture, was taught by Msia Kibona Clark. Clark, whose Wikipedia username is Mkibona, is an associate professor of African cultural and feminist studies at Howard University. As of press time, 12 out of the 24 articles linked on the course page are redlinks. One of those, about the activist organization Black Women Radicals (archive link), was nominated for deletion on December 13; it was deleted a week later, after a clear consensus formed that the group was not notable (editors also identified copyright violations and promotionalism issues).
During the nomination, Clark posted on Twitter "I don't know where the Black (& allies) nerds are, but I really need support in editing & saving" the article, in a thread where she tagged the group's Twitter handle. The AfD nominator joined the Twitter conversation, identifying themselves, linking to the canvassing guideline, and stating "I am 100% not trying to erase anything cultural. I based my decisions on notability guidelines and what other editors said about the content."
Other users, including the Black Women Radicals account, responded with hostility, particularly after the editor revealed that they were 15 years old. @uchenna (Uchenna Kema) wrote "Delete your Wikipedia account and go to school". @moontomysea mockingly paraphrased their comments as "yes i erased your nigger page from wikipedia and if you talk about it the rules say we can ban you", commenting "they sure do make white fifteen year old kids bold now don't they". The Black Women Radicals account tweeted "It's a shame the ways Wikipedia (particularly its overwhelming[ly] white editors) gatekeep what is considered 'notable' enough to have a Wiki article. Most of the time, Black women's work is not considered 'notable' enough." They also shared a screenshot showing that the nominator had blocked them.
The nominator brought the matter to the Education Noticeboard, where they expressed intense distress. "I am now scared of what they will do next, if they'll follow me into other social media or even here to make attacks or potentially doxx me as an act of 'revenge'," they wrote. "Please help."
Many editors responded. Ian Ramjohn, the Senior Wikipedia Expert for WikiEd, wrote "I'm horrified at what has happened here" and communicated information about how Wikipedia operates to the group in replies on Twitter. Administrator Joe Roe pointed out that many non-Wikipedians on Twitter likely misunderstood the role of an editor to be "someone with special authority over Wikipedia content", rather than anyone who edits.
Clark explained and defended her actions in the noticeboard thread. "I initially only turned to my community on Twitter because I was frustrated, I was not being heard, and I didn't know what to do," she wrote. "I needed help getting resources and ideas for the article, as well as help navigating Wikipedia. I also needed support from my community because it is not a good feeling to feel like you're not being heard and to feel powerless to do anything about it." Regarding the nominator, she wrote "when he went on Twitter, identified himself, and continued with the tone of criticism and chastising that I had experienced on Wikipedia, I anticipated the reaction. I wish it had not happened, but it did not have to happen."
In a statement for WikiEd, LiAnna Davis (its chief programs officer and deputy director) wrote "I'm very sorry this situation has resulted in multiple people feeling harassed." However, the bulk of her statement focused on thanking Clark for her work trying to combat systemic bias on Wikipedia, reminding editors to assume good faith about her intentions in going to Twitter, and urging the community to take into account the "systemic bias in our sources" when assessing articles. Administrator Barkeep49 criticized this response, saying that WikiEd was responsible for "blasé handling of demonstrable harassment". Davis later clarified that "my post yesterday should have read 'being harassed', not 'feeling harassed'. My apologies for my poor wording choice." Discussion about WikiEd continued from there, with the harassment issues referred to WMF Trust and Safety for private handling.
African Americans are severely underrepresented among Wikipedia editors, according to a 2020 WMF survey, which found that they make up only 0.5% of American editors, despite being around 14% of the American population. There remain many content gaps in Wikipedia's coverage of Black history and culture.
The incident highlights the ongoing challenges faced by WikiEd's student editing program. Supporters argue that a few troublesome instances overshadow many quieter successes, point to its thorough training modules, and note that it helps bring in a more diverse group of editors. Detractors emphasize the disruption to the community from courses that produce problematic content and note that few students go on to make productive contributions after their course ends.
The incident also highlights the challenge of communicating Wikipedia's complex processes to unfamiliar audiences, especially in heated situations where people may be inclined to view community decisions through a political or ideological lens. Marginalized communities, in particular, may be reticent to assume good faith after having endured systemic discrimination. "The experience was hurtful for me and for my students who witnessed it," wrote Clark in the noticeboard thread.
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JMWt (talk) 06:10, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
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Having further researched aspects of this story, there are various other aspects that are troubling to me. First, the narrative would have us believe that there is a 15 year old editor that is so active on the WikiEd noticeboard that they are actively and regularly critiquing class edits in real time and is seeking to make dramatic changes soon after certain classes finish via AfD nominations. Second, this same 15 year old appears to be so engaged and enraged by something (exactly what, I'm not sure) that they go looking on twitter for further engagement relating to a deleted page. It isn't for me to make a judgement about the specific twitter engagement, but it is surely factual that if the AfD-nominator had not gone looking for a continued discussion on twitter then the likelihood is that nothing would have happened to them personally. In general, I think it is troubling when one self-identified young person hangs around on a noticeboard looking to critique the WP edits of other young people. Even if this isn't a direct effort to remove content that they disapprove of, it is surely not something particularly constructive for them to be doing. I'm not sure it is something particularly useful for anyone to be doing to be honest, and to me this is an important part of the whole affair. Finally, having reviewed the work of the class in question, I think on the whole the edits are solid, so I really can't see why this is said to be an example of WikiEd somehow failing beyond repair. Again, I fundamentally disagree that any of the pages should have been deleted by the AfD process. JMWt (talk) 07:03, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Far be it from me to avoid the fifth largest shitshow@Wizzito: I just thought I'd reaffirm that this definitely was harassment (while people can feel harassed without actually being so, this was not a case of thin-skin-itis), and that your on-wiki actions were perfectly correct, and that regardless of whether it was wise or not to post on-twitter, you had every right to do so. That @BrownHairedGirl: seems to be suggesting that your age alone is enough to rule you out of not merely something like adminship but content-work and core processes of Wikipedia is disturbing to me, and I repudiate that position to the strongest degree I can, let alone the position of one editor above saying that editors of your age shouldn't edit at all. Bonkers. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:37, 2 February 2022 (UTC)Having read through all the above, and having viewed the deleted content, I'd like to simply observe that, personally, I see nothing special about the deleted article - it's typical of many that are deleted every week for being either non-notable or promotional, and which come from all corners of the globe and on all forms of interest or minority groups. It's unfortunate that behind the editing activities there lay, off-wiki, a small number of somewhat zealous people who were encouraged to help save that article, but went about it in quite the wrong way. It seems unfortunate that the AfD nominator appears to have tried to defend their position on social media too. This is never a good idea, whichever standpoint on an article one takes. I would make the following observations:
Declaration: I'm white, middle-class, European, and old enough to feel suitably experienced to be able to assess the significance of cited sources in articles. OK, I might just have voted 'weak keep' at AfD myself, but more to help add a small voice to highlight some of the content imbalance that we do see here on Wikipedia than because of any inherent notability of this young organisation, wherever in the world it is based (something that wasn't even stated in the article) Nick Moyes (talk) 22:55, 5 February 2022 (UTC)