Keynote: How research can strengthen the movement: Understanding and assessing threats to fundamental Wikimedia values
🎥 Session recording: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2026_%E2%80%93_Keynote_How_research_can_strengthen_the_movement_Understanding_and_assessing_threats_to_fundamental_Wikimedia_values.webm](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2026_%E2%80%93_Keynote_How_research_can_strengthen_the_movement_Understanding_and_assessing_threats_to_fundamental_Wikimedia_values.webm)
Reliability and trustworthiness are fundamental values underpinning the Wikimedia movement. Urgent challenges confront these aspects of the movement in a variety of ways, some of which research can help to address. In this talk, I make two arguments at the intersection of movement strategy, community leadership, and research. First, I describe a conceptual approach for mapping the attack surface of the Wikimedia movement and projects as instances of ''critical epistemic infrastructure,'' a class of public goods with distinct attributes and vulnerabilities that are increasingly targeted in adversarial ways. Second, as part of a strategic response to these attacks, I argue for more rigorous empirical assessment of projects and artifacts, drawing from ongoing work on Neutral Point of View (NPOV) that began as part of the WMF-convened NPOV Working Group over the past year. Putting these two pieces together—understanding the attack surface and rigorous empirical assessment—offers a path for research to support movement integrity and strategy.
