The first study of how Wikipedia represents Australian places has highlighted how aspects of the online encyclopedia and choices made by the volunteer editors who work on it can lead to absences, omissions and sanitised views in articles about Australia.

As part of a 3-year Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Wikihistories research team has analysed more than 35,000 articles about Australian places in the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, including more than half a million edits to these articles. In-depth interviews also have been conducted with a number of article editors.

The research has informed a newly released report examining who edits articles about Australian places in Wikipedia, what have been the most controversial elements in editing them, what aspects of Australian place are included and what are obscured.

“Wikipedia is the non-profit icon of the internet age, the world’s largest encyclopedia and the de facto global reference of knowledge about people, places, events and things,” said lead Wikihistories researcher, Associate Professor of Digital and Social Media Heather Ford.

“It has become more than that now with the advent of generative AI. The site and its associated platforms are core components of the knowledge ecosystem, used to train large language models like ChatGPT and as a data source for Google info boxes and voice assistants like Siri and Alexa.

“As a result, Wikipedia’s representations can have huge effects on what is known and understood about Australian places, particularly where its content doesn’t reflect the experience of all Australia’s peoples or all knowledge about Australian places. As an information source it can be both influential and partial.”

Associate Professor Ford said Wikipedia was a significant site of contention around the central questions of Australian place and identity, including settler-colonialism, republicanism, and the presentation of important historical events associated with a specific place.

“There is significant enthusiasm for including marginalised aspects of Australian place, but this enthusiasm is overwhelmed by a spectrum of reluctance, discomfort, sanitisation and active resistance,” she said.

“This is often the result of editors’ discomfort with negative aspects of a place or its history, as well as a desire to avoid inclusion of aspects that will inevitably result in conflict with other editors.

“There are examples of articles, that while recognising Frist Nations history in an area, obscure or don’t acknowledge what happened to remove the original inhabitants from their land.

“For Australian readers the research provides insight into the contention around the history and understandings of Australian places and the markers of ‘Australianness’.

“For government policymakers there are implications for education curricula, especially in incorporating critical digital literacy skills in using Wikipedia and understanding its role in the wider digital and knowledge ecosystems.

“And, for Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia editors there are significant implications for policy and practice in relation to engagement with First Nations content and experience.”

Some data points from the report:

• Most articles about Australian places in English Wikipedia editions are centred on Australian cities that were established by predominately British settlers in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
• Even though there are still missing articles about Australian places on English Wikipedia, there are a series of well-developed articles about fictional places including a 5,000 word article about Erinsborough, the suburb of Melbourne where TV soap Neighbours is set.
• One of the most contentious articles about Australian places is on Barmah National Park which has been the subject of a long-running dispute over whether horses in the national park should be considered as ‘wild’ or ‘feral’.
• Including First Nations place names on Wikipedia is so contentious that many editors avoid the inevitable debates about them. About 6% of Australian places are dual-named on English Wikipedia. Although this is relatively small it is comparable to the ABC or the state-based Geographical Names Boards.
• Editors often avoid including negative aspects of a place (e.g. discriminatory Australian government policy and violence against First Nations peoples) in articles.
• Many Wikipedia editors’ experiences of contentiousness include burning out, running out of energy, and being drained. Some never return to editing.
• Other editors are driven by a responsibility for ensuring that places are well represented on the Internet and for posterity, given Wikipedia’s importance in the information ecosystem.

The report How Australian places are represented on Wikipedia is by Heather Ford (UTS), Francesca Sidoti (UTS), Michael Falk (University of Melbourne) and Tamson Pietsch (UTS).