Wikipedia:Historically Black College and University recruitment

Wikipedia has a number of systemic biases, mostly deriving from the demographics of our participant base, the heavy bias towards online research, and the (generally commendable) tendency to "write what you know". In other words, there are structural reasons why Wikipedia gives certain topics much better coverage than others. Over the last year or so, some of these biases have been partially redressed by the project on countering systemic bias, but that project has so far been focused mainly on getting the present participant base to re-examine some of their assumptions and to work in subject matter areas that were previously neglected.

However, some of us feel that a much more effective corrective would be the recruitment of contributors outside the present Wikipedia mainstream. In the United States, one of the most obvious sources of likely contributors who would bring a different perspective, and who are currently under-represented, is America's Historically Black colleges and universities and, perhaps to a lesser extent, African American studies at other colleges and universities.

This page exists both as a welcome to students and faculty from these institutions to participate in Wikipedia and as a location for suggestions as to what infrastructure might improve recruitment and retention of African American scholars as Wikipedians.

While faculty are eminently welcome to participate, it should be pointed out that academics generally have their own preferred outlets for their work, and that Wikipedia is largely a cooperative undertaking by laypeople: we are focused mainly on recruiting students and alumni of these institutions. In our experience, two of the best contributions faculty can make are (1) to encourage their students to participate, possibly for academic credit, and (2) to establish well-conceived student assignments involving Wikipedia.