WikiGap: Promoting Epistemic Equity by Surfacing Knowledge Gaps Between English Wikipedia and other Language Editions

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Wang, Zining, Zhang, Yuxuan, Yoon, Dongwook, Vincent, Nicholas, Samir, Farhan, Shwartz, Vered
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Wang, Zining
Zhang, Yuxuan
Yoon, Dongwook
Vincent, Nicholas
Samir, Farhan
Shwartz, Vered
author_facet Wang, Zining
Zhang, Yuxuan
Yoon, Dongwook
Vincent, Nicholas
Samir, Farhan
Shwartz, Vered
contents With more than 11 times as many pageviews as the next largest edition, English Wikipedia dominates global knowledge access relative to other language editions. Readers are prone to assuming English Wikipedia as a superset of all language editions, leading many to prefer it even when their primary language is not English. Other language editions, however, comprise complementary facts rooted in their respective cultures and media environments, which are marginalized in English Wikipedia. While Wikipedia's user interface enables switching between language editions through its Interlanguage Link (ILL) system, it does not reveal to readers that other language editions contain valuable, complementary information. We present WikiGap, a system that surfaces complementary facts sourced from other Wikipedias within the English Wikipedia interface. Specifically, by combining a recent multilingual information-gap discovery method with a user-centered design, WikiGap enables access to complementary information from French, Russian, and Chinese Wikipedia. In a mixed-methods study (n=21), WikiGap significantly improved fact-finding accuracy, reduced task time, and received a 32-point higher usability score relative to Wikipedia's current ILL-based navigation system. Participants reported increased awareness of the availability of complementary information in non-English editions and reconsidered the completeness of English Wikipedia. WikiGap thus paves the way for improved epistemic equity across language editions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_24195
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle WikiGap: Promoting Epistemic Equity by Surfacing Knowledge Gaps Between English Wikipedia and other Language Editions
Wang, Zining
Zhang, Yuxuan
Yoon, Dongwook
Vincent, Nicholas
Samir, Farhan
Shwartz, Vered
Human-Computer Interaction
Computation and Language
With more than 11 times as many pageviews as the next largest edition, English Wikipedia dominates global knowledge access relative to other language editions. Readers are prone to assuming English Wikipedia as a superset of all language editions, leading many to prefer it even when their primary language is not English. Other language editions, however, comprise complementary facts rooted in their respective cultures and media environments, which are marginalized in English Wikipedia. While Wikipedia's user interface enables switching between language editions through its Interlanguage Link (ILL) system, it does not reveal to readers that other language editions contain valuable, complementary information. We present WikiGap, a system that surfaces complementary facts sourced from other Wikipedias within the English Wikipedia interface. Specifically, by combining a recent multilingual information-gap discovery method with a user-centered design, WikiGap enables access to complementary information from French, Russian, and Chinese Wikipedia. In a mixed-methods study (n=21), WikiGap significantly improved fact-finding accuracy, reduced task time, and received a 32-point higher usability score relative to Wikipedia's current ILL-based navigation system. Participants reported increased awareness of the availability of complementary information in non-English editions and reconsidered the completeness of English Wikipedia. WikiGap thus paves the way for improved epistemic equity across language editions.
title WikiGap: Promoting Epistemic Equity by Surfacing Knowledge Gaps Between English Wikipedia and other Language Editions
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.24195