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This presentation examines how Wikipedia’s editorial decision-making processes shape the visibility, discoverability and retrievability of gender-diverse identities. Based on our article “Editorial decision-making on Wikipedia: an analysis of gender bias and its impact on discoverability and information retrieval”, the session focuses on deliberation and voting processes in the Catalan, Italian and French Wikipedias concerning three issues: gender-based categories, inclusive language and the use of trans people’s dead names in biographical articles. The study analyses nine decision-making processes conducted between 2014-2024. These debates addressed the inclusion or rejection of categories such as “women” and “non-binary people”, the use of inclusive language in Italian Wikipedia, and the treatment of birth names or dead names in biographies of trans people in French Wikipedia. The findings show that resistance to gender diversity is often justified through appeals to neutrality, community norms and existing policies, while arguments in favour of inclusion rely on ethical considerations, practical reasoning and precedents. The presentation argues that Wikipedia’s gender gap is also infrastructural: categories, authority control, naming practices and language policies determine what can be searched, retrieved and recognized. It invites discussion on how Wikimedia communities can rethink metadata and editorial governance to support more inclusive knowledge organization.
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