Wikidata:WikiProject Decolonise Wiki

Decolonise Wiki is a collaborative project for editors interested in improving topics, practices, and representations related to the global diversity of knowledge on Wikipedia. The project aims to bring together volunteers from different fields to identify content gaps, improve existing articles, develop editorial resources, and facilitate discussions around inclusive approaches that are fully aligned with Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

The project does not promote any specific political or ideological position. Its purpose is to support the quality, breadth, and representativeness of encyclopedic content by drawing on well-established methods in fields such as decolonial studies, historiography, library and information science, and diversity practices in knowledge institutions. All contributions must follow Wikipedia’s core content policies, including neutral point of view, verifiability, and civility.

Scope

The scope of Decolonise Wiki includes, but is not limited to:

Articles about concepts, events, practices, and debates related to global knowledge diversity.
Biographies, institutions, and initiatives relevant to the study of knowledge production and circulation in different regions.
Topics that are underrepresented or unevenly covered across languages and regions.
Editorial and methodological issues related to content organization, categorisation, terminology, and sources.

The project does not deal with advocacy campaigns outside the strictly encyclopedic context, and it does not propose any action that would contradict Wikipedia’s content policies or community norms.

Goals

The project seeks to:

Support the improvement of articles related to historically underrepresented topics, regions, and perspectives.
Map content, bibliographic, and regional gaps and propose strategies to address them.
Offer methodological guidance for editing articles with diverse perspectives while maintaining neutrality and rigor.
Facilitate collaboration between editors through shared worklists, discussions, and thematic subprojects.
Promote multilingual accessibility by preparing project documentation in multiple languages.
Document good practices related to sourcing, terminology, and historical contextualisation.

Rationale

Wikipedia is built from verifiable secondary sources. Many areas of knowledge reflect historiographical and institutional traditions that may privilege certain perspectives over others. This can result in:

missing or underdeveloped concepts;
underrepresentation of particular regions, communities, or traditions;
inconsistent terminology across language editions;
uneven bibliographic coverage;
limited contextual information for readers.

Decolonise Wiki aims to offer collaborative tools for dealing with such asymmetries in a technical and source-based way. The project encourages editors to identify and address these issues by improving articles, sourcing, and contextualisation, always in line with verifiability, neutrality, and no original research.

Structure

Given the breadth of the topic, the project follows an "umbrella with branches" model:

The main project page provides shared goals, rationale, guidelines, and coordination.
The project can host subprojects devoted to specific areas (for example, thematic fields, regions, or content types).
Each branch may maintain its own worklists, guidelines, and tracking pages, while remaining aligned with the project’s overall principles.

Candidate branches (for discussion)

The following branches are proposed as starting points for community discussion. They are not final and can be adapted or expanded:

Art & Culture
Climate Change
History
Technology
Food

New branches may be created based on community interest and demonstrated need.

Branch points of contact

The following volunteers serve as non-hierarchical points of contact for coordinating activities in specific branches. These roles are organisational only and do not imply editorial authority over articles.

Art & Culture — Victorvtm serves as the point of contact for this branch.
Climate Change — Geewhizz91 serves as the point of contact for this branch.

Additional points of contact may be added as new branches develop and volunteers step forward.

How to participate

Any editor interested in the project’s goals is welcome to participate, regardless of prior experience.

You can:

Add your name to the Participants list below.
Join current tasks in one of the project’s worklists.
Suggest new tasks, branches, or areas of focus on the project’s talk page.
Contribute by adding reliable sources, improving article structure and prose, performing copyedits, translating content, and reviewing references.

Editors are encouraged to watchlist this page and its talk page to stay informed of ongoing discussions and initiatives.

Initial tasks

Early areas of work include:

Mapping key concepts that are missing or underdeveloped in relevant topic areas.
Identifying priority biographies, institutions, events, and works for article creation or expansion.
Compiling lists of articles that may need improved sourcing, contextualisation, or balance of perspectives.
Gathering reliable secondary sources that can support content improvements.
Harmonising terminology between language editions when possible, while respecting local usage.
Drafting basic guidelines and examples to help editors work on related topics in line with core policies.

More detailed worklists (for example, by branch or content type) can be created as the project grows.

Resources

Editors involved in the project are encouraged to make use of the following resources:

Wikipedia:WikiProject – overview of how WikiProjects work.
Citing sources – guidance on verifiability and referencing.
Neutral point of view – key content policy.
Verifiability – use of reliable sources.
Assume good faith and Civility – guidelines for community interaction.
Relevant academic and institutional references published by recognised organisations, always used in accordance with Wikipedia’s content policies.

Additional resource lists, bibliographies, and example articles can be developed as subpages of the project.

Communication and coordination

The project’s primary venue for communication and coordination is its talk page.

General questions, suggestions, and proposals should be posted on the project talk page.
Discussions related to a specific branch may be handled on that branch’s dedicated subpage.
Periodic online meetings, edit-a-thons, or focused drives may be organised by interested volunteers.
Multilingual coordination can be managed via dedicated sections or subpages in each language.

Translations

The English version of this project page serves as the base text for other language editions.

Planned translations include:

French – prepared by interested editors within the French-speaking community.
Portuguese – prepared by interested editors within the Portuguese-speaking community.
Spanish – prepared by interested editors within the Spanish-speaking community.

Each language version should maintain structural consistency with the base page, while adapting terminology to local usage where appropriate and in consultation with local communities.

Participants

[+] Add yourself to the list by inserting your username in the list below (please keep entries alphabetical by username when possible).

The participants listed below can be notified using the following template in discussions:

{{Ping project|Decolonise Wiki}}

If you are interested in this project, please add your name and consider watchlisting this page and its talk page.