Taxonomies and Ontologies in Wikipedia and Wikidata: An In-Depth Examination of Knowledge Organization Systems

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Hipertext.net. n.28, 2024
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Miquel Centelles
Universitat de Barcelona
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1739-4889
Núria Ferran Ferrer
Universitat de Barcelona
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9037-8837

This article examines Wikipedia’s knowledge organization system (KOS) and the broader KOS of Wikidata. We study the structure, functions, and relationship of Wikipedia’s KOS to concepts like taxonomies and folksonomies, highlighting its unique characteristics compared to social media. A significant aspect of our examination is the gender-related content classification in the Catalan edition of Wikipedia (Viquipèdia), which notably excludes female categories and non-binary gender classifications. We explore the potential implications of these restrictions on gender bias within the platform. Furthermore, we broaden our investigative methodology to assess the KOS of Wikidata. Wikidata is a dataset built on ontological principles, designed to enhance and enrich Wikipedia’s digital, collaborative encyclopedia. The findings shed light on the presence or absence of gender bias and contribute to the ongoing discourse on promoting inclusivity and diversity in online knowledge sharing.

Keywords
KOS, Knowledge Organization System, Ontology, Taxonomy, Wikidata, Wikipedia

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Centelles, Miquel; Ferran Ferrer, Núria. “Taxonomies and Ontologies in Wikipedia and Wikidata: An In-Depth Examination of Knowledge Organization Systems”. Hipertext.net, 2024, no. 28, pp. 33-48, doi:10.31009/hipertext.net.2024.i28.04.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

(c) Miquel Centelles, Núria Ferran Ferrer, 2024


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Author Biographies

Miquel Centelles, Universitat de Barcelona

He is a professor at the Faculty of Information and Audiovisual Media at the University of Barcelona (FIMA).
He holds a degree in Library Science and Documentation and a bachelor’s degree in Philology. His teaching and research focus on the representation and organization of information, as well as the application of semantic technologies in information and knowledge management. He coordinated the Master’s in Digital Content Management from 2005 to 2008, and since 2020, he has been the coordinator of the Master’s in Digital Humanities, involving five faculties at the UB. In research, he has collaborated on the Archiver project for the digital preservation of research data (Archiver TENDER – European Union), and the I+D+I project, Women and Wikipedia (PID2020-116936RA-I00).

Núria Ferran Ferrer, Universitat de Barcelona

An associate professor at the Faculty of Information and Audiovisual Media at the University of Barcelona (UB) since 2021, previously at the UOC from 2005. She coordinates the Doctoral Program in Information and Communication at UB. She holds a European doctorate from UB (2010), with degrees in Journalism (UAB, 1998), Documentation (UOC, 2003), and a Master’s in Information Society (IN3-UOC, 2005). She has been an associate professor at several universities, including UAB, UB, and UPF. Currently, she serves as the delegate of the rector for the Directorate of the Equality Unit. In research, she is the principal investigator of the I+D+I project, Women and Wikipedia (PID2020-116936RA-I00), where she supervises two theses. She has also collaborated on open science and citizen science projects and conducted research stays at the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom, 2009) and theUniversity of Tallin (Estonia, 2015).

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