CASE STUDY

Transforming a biased encyclopedia into a living knowledge commons

Using Wikipedia integration, AI-assisted workflows, and community collaboration to turn a biased legacy text into a living, inclusive resource.

The STORY

Restoring credibility through Wikipedia integration and community building

Between 1978 and 1986, the South African Music Encyclopedia (SAME) set out to catalogue the country’s musical life. Like much of its era, it was shaped by apartheid ideology: white composers were documented in detail, while Black musicians and oral traditions were sidelined or silenced.

Four decades later, the Africa Open Institute (AOI) and the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) commissioned me to help reimagine the encyclopedia for the present. Their aim was to lay the groundwork for a long-term, open-access Southern African Encyclopedia of Music & Sound (SA-EMS) that would serve a decolonial function, expand representation across South Africa’s eleven official languages (and eventually into wider Southern Africa), and operate as an evolving, sustainable platform rather than a static database.

The deliverable they wanted was clear: a pilot digital platform that could demonstrate how to build, host, maintain, and preserve an open encyclopedia. It needed to include rewritten and newly commissioned articles, multilingual contributions, and clear guidelines for sustaining the project over time.

Rather than replicate the original format or build an expensive proprietary platform, I worked with AOI and SADiLaR to reposition the project inside Wikipedia — transforming it into a living, open-access commons that could grow through collective contribution and oversight.

What do you do with a reference work that is at once invaluable and deeply flawed? This was the complex problem faced by a group of researchers and a national centre for the digital humanities: how to give new life to the South African Music Encyclopedia — a four-volume reference text compiled during apartheid and shaped by its exclusions, omissions, and bias. Simply digitizing it would only reproduce the same problems in a new format. The challenge was to transform a closed, static text into something open, credible, and useful for future scholarship and the wider public.

With student interest growing and few resources to spare, waiting for consensus wasn’t an option. This case study tells the story of how change was unlocked from within — not through top-down reform, but through strategic alignment, quiet innovation, and deep listening. What follows is the five-part design approach that reshaped policy by working with — rather than against — the system.

The Challenge

The ambition:
an open, inclusive platform. The constraints: bias, resources, and fragile systems.

The Southern African Music Encyclopedia, first published in print decades ago, was both rich in archival knowledge and deeply shaped by the exclusions of its time. While it catalogued certain repertoires in detail, it systematically overlooked others, reflecting the racial and cultural biases of apartheid-era scholarship. Simply digitizing the text would not solve the problem; it would only risk amplifying those distortions in a new medium.

At &listen…, we hear constraints as invitations for creative thinking. We work within the open web as a resource for sustainable digital transformation — harnessing it to expand access, reimagine knowledge systems, and spark innovation. In doing so, we amplify organizational audibility in both the human and digital commons.

LET'S LISTEN TOGETHER

AOI and SADiLaR wanted the encyclopedia to become a sustainable, open platform, but several obstacles stood in the way:

Inherited bias silenced voices
The encyclopedia was shaped by deep racial and cultural exclusions. Its authority rested on detail, but entire communities and traditions were misrepresented or erased.
Simple digitization failed the test
Simply transferring the text online would not have solved the problem. Without intervention, the exclusions would have echoed louder in digital form.

Resource scarcity undermined sustainability
With no budget for salaries and limited technical capacity, building and maintaining a custom platform was not feasible. Any solution had to be cost-effective, open, collaborative, and future-proof

Ambition collided with reality
South Africa’s eleven official languages demanded a flexible, collaborative model of knowledge production. A static, English-only platform could never meet this need.

Collaboration faltered without people power
Sustaining an open encyclopedia required active participation, but recruiting, training, and retaining contributors proved difficult under resource constraints.

Politics of representation inflamed tensions
Questions of ownership, authority, and whose voices should lead the renewal process often provoked defensiveness and contested claims.

THE APPROACH

Rather than attempt a top-down rebuild, the project unfolded through a five-part strategy grounded in open knowledge systems, digital transformation, and community building.

By integrating Wikipedia with an API-linked external website, and using AI tools for making workflows more efficient, the approach worked tactically within existing global infrastructures to create a resilient, inclusive, and future-facing resource.

01

Attune

What needed to change, and what could be leveraged?

The first step was diagnostic: listening to the encyclopedia itself, its exclusions, and the constraints of the institutions behind it. Attuning to the silences — missing traditions, languages, and voices — clarified that simple digitization would replicate bias. Instead, openness and sustainability had to be designed into the core.

02

Equalize

Where was the system misaligned or unfairly weighted?

South Africa’s rich musical heritage demanded ambition, but resources were scarce. Equalizing meant building workflows that didn’t privilege certain genres and styles, and finding tools that could stretch limited human capacity. AI-assisted transcription, text-cleaning, and metadata support became essential here — helping to expand reach without overburdening people.

04

Broadcast

How do you bring people along, especially in the face of resistance?

Broadcasting meant engaging editors, training contributors, and navigating Wikipedia’s strict notability and governance rules. Community edit-a-thons and collaborative writing events created legitimacy and resilience. Governance hurdles weren’t sidestepped but translated into credibility — making the encyclopedia’s voice stable, defensible, and audible to both people and AI systems.

03

Amplify

How do you build the future before it's officially recognised?

Amplification came through infrastructure. Instead of locking content into a single fragile site, the encyclopedia was anchored in Wikipedia, while an external companion website pulled entries dynamically through the API. This dual structure made the resource discoverable globally while still giving the project its own branded, curated home.

05

Sustain

How do you make change stick beyond a single project or person?

Sustainability was secured through documentation, contributor training, and institutional embedding. By combining open platforms (Wikipedia/Wikidata), a flexible API-fed website, and AI-assisted workflows, the project created a knowledge commons designed to evolve. What began as a biased, static text was reimagined as a living, adaptive infrastructure for inclusive knowledge.

THE OUTCOMES

A biased print text reborn as a Wikipedia Knowledge Hub

The pilot transformed a static, apartheid-era encyclopedia into a living, open platform. By combining community engagement, API integration, and AI-assisted workflows, the project produced measurable reach and credibility:

programmes launched to train and support new contributors

editors engaged

86 300

words added to Wikipedia across articles

128

Wikipedia articles edited

836

citations added to Wikipedia, strengthening reliability and authority

new Wikipedia articles created, expanding representation of overlooked traditions

Wikicommons uploads improving multimedia audibility

99 999

article views, demonstrating early global impact