wikigender.org:Quality Control System
Websites based on “wiki” technology invite the public to modify the content displayed on the pages. It is therefore important to have mechanisms in place that ensure high quality of information. Wikigender has implemented several of these mechanisms and created an effective quality control system.
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Protection from automated spam
Only registered users can post content on Wikigender. During the registration process, Wikigender filters out automatically generated registrations (e.g. robots; spiders) with a so called “captcha”. A captcha is a test used in computing to make sure that the user is not run by a computer. By requiring a user to decipher distorted letters, anybody entering a correct solution is presumed to be human as computers are unable to read the text. Captchas are also required if users want to add external links to their articles, avoiding that Wikigender is abused as a platform for automatically generated hyperlinks.
User name regulation
Not all user names can be chosen when registering for Wikigender. In particular, we prevent people from using offensive or inappropriate user names as well as names that might give the incorrect impression that a user represents one of the official partners of Wikigender. For example, user names containing a sequence of letter such as “OECD”, “Development Centre” or “Wikigender” are blocked.
Wikigender Policies and Conventions
Wikigender does not impose any official structure to control articles. It is therefore paramount that the Wikigender community follows at set of rules, procedures and values, which continue to evolve as the platform develops further. At the centre of these policies and conventions is the plea for “mutual respect”, the use of a “neutral point of view” when drafting articles and the “verification of each contribution” with reliable references. The policies and conventions of Wikigender are posted on the web and can be accessed through the About Wikigender page.
User management
Wikigender has three types of users: those who are not registered can only read articles; those who are registered can read, modify and comment on articles (including uploading documents); and finally those who have administrative rights can read, modify, comment on and protect articles from unauthorised modifications (including uploaded documents). Administrative rights are restricted to a small group of selected partners. In the future, we will introduce a fourth type of user: those who are involved in any revision/flagging process and/or those who would be elected as member of an editorial committee.
Two-layer approach
Wikigender follows a two-layer approach in the articles that are posted on the website. The “Official Source” label, which clearly marks pages which have been validated by one of the official partners of Wikigender, highlights peer-reviewed (and thus reliable) information. The label can only be given to “protected” pages, so unauthorised users cannot counterfeit an “official source” page themselves. The label appears on top of the article while the page itself has a different format, making it clearly distinguishable from an ordinary Wikigender page.
Day-to-day quality management
Wikigender allows an easy quality check by looking at the “Recent Changes” that have occurred and the “New Pages” which have been created. First, each and every article can be "patrolled". This basic functionality allows any "Quality Control Manager" (QCM) to flag it as "patrolled". Not visible by ordinary users, “patrolling” a page facilitates the daily job of the QCM (or "patrollers"). In the case of a “new page”, inappropriate or offensive content can be deleted by a user with administrative rights. Needless to say, all users are invited to flag inappropriate content and contact Wikigender to intervene [1] .
If the changes occured in an already existing article all users can “revert” the modifications and go back to an earlier version of the article. As a rule, all saved versions of an article remain accessible for users of Wikigender, facilitating quality control and the possible intervention in case of violation. Quality control is therefore already a shared responsibility of the OECD Development Centre, its official partners and the Wikigender community. A future challenge will be to designate “quality control managers” who will be given administrative rights to guarantee the highest level of quality of a certain section or topic within the platform.
Content Guidelines
The following steps outline the content checking process to guide all contributors:
- Contributions [data or text or comments] should refer to gender-related issues
- Contributions should be different to other articles on the site, or directly related to other articles on the site (and should be linked)
- Basic grammar and spelling should be checked
- Graphs, charts and tables should be clearly labeled and readable
- Quotes, data etc., should be referenced
- Statistical language and jargon should be limited or directly linked to a definition or article explaining the terms (preferably on wikigender)
- Links embedded in the article should be checked
- Where articles fail to meet these standards the article (or text or charts in the article) will be flagged for general edit (to invite browsers to update references for instance)
- The article or comment should not include offensive material, advertising or links to external offensive or commercial websites.
