Life Histories of Taboo Knowledge Artifacts

Abstract

Communicating about some vital topics—such as sexuality and health—is treated as taboo and subjected to censorship. How can we construct knowledge about these topics? Wikipedia is home to numerous high-quality knowledge artifacts about taboo topics like sexual organs and human reproduction. How did these artifacts come into being? How is their existence sustained? This mixed-methods comparative project builds on previous work on taboo topics in Wikipedia and draws from qualitative and quantitative approaches. We follow a sequential complementary design, developing a narrative articulation of the life of taboo articles, comparing them to nontaboo articles, and examining some of their quantifiable traits. We find that taboo knowledge artifacts develop through multiple successful collaboration styles and, unsurprisingly, that taboo subjects are the sites of conflict. We identify and describe six themes in the development of taboo knowledge artifacts. These artifacts need resilient leadership and engaged organizations to thrive under conditions of limited identifiability and disjointed sensemaking, while contributors simultaneously engage in emergent governance and imagining public audiences. Our observations have important implications for supporting public knowledge work on controversial subjects such as taboos and more generally.