False figures on the deaths of the Covid, stories glorifying the Nazis and a preponderance of pages devoted to men… Here is the daily lot of the army of volunteers who moderate the tens of millions of Wikipedia articles.
The world's largest digital encyclopedia is often the first result to appear in an Internet search, and is an invaluable source of free information.
But it also reveals some human flaws, because the articles on the site can in theory be written, in more than 300 languages, by anyone with an Internet connection.
The role of moderators, who are mostly anonymous volunteers, is therefore decisive.
Fighting false information about the Covid
A doctor by profession in the Middle East, Alaa Najjar, who says he contributes nearly 500 articles per week, has had to deal with a flood of false health information with the pandemic.
He noted in particular articles falsely claiming that the Covid had killed celebrities or pages exaggerating the number of deaths and cases in certain countries.
"I reread hundreds of articles during the pandemic and I rejected many misleading or erroneous changes," says Alaa Najjar, who in 2021 was awarded the most prestigious encyclopedia award for his work.
Nazi hunter
Wikipedia relies above all on volunteers whose mission is to sort through the mass of contributions, a task that can turn out to be thankless. "A reviewer called me a vandal for removing unsourced information," says Ksenia Coffman, who battles WWII articles that idealize the role of the Nazis and German generals.
A kind of narrative that downplays the historical context of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, including the Holocaust, and extolling its feats of arms has influenced an alternative culture on the Internet that has intruded on Wikipedia.
"How come I get attacked when I try to correct this and remove un-sourced cobblestones that only glorify so-called Nazi war heroes?"
Asks Ksenia Coffman, who lives in California but grew up in the Soviet Union.
Ensure the fair representation of women
Wikipedia articles - supported by written and reliable sources from the press or academic publications - also sometimes reveal certain disparities in the intellectual field, including the unequal representation of women in relation to men. “Wikipedia is an awkward mirror that reflects systemic inequalities in knowledge,” says Rebecca O'Neill, a Dublin-based moderator who says she devotes about 40 minutes to the platform a day.
In 2015, only 15% of biographies in English were devoted to women.
After rebalancing efforts, the figure rose to 19% in 2021, says Rebecca O'Neill.
Last year, she wrote an average of one Wikipedia article per day with a ratio of 19 female biographies for every male biography.
“As an individual, I have a role to play”.
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