Sandi Toksvig is raising support for Mappa Mundi, a digital atlas project being developed with the University of Cambridge. She argues that existing knowledge platforms overlook important material, especially information about women, and wants to create space for that work.
The Guardian’s report cites Wikimedia’s estimate that women account for only nineteen percent of Wikipedia biographies. It also discusses the experience of physicist Donna Strickland, whose draft biography faced rejection before she received a Nobel prize. Toksvig uses such examples to question how significance is judged.
The proposed atlas is intended to accommodate material that is marginalised or removed elsewhere. Its ambitions remain a project under development, rather than a completed replacement for Wikipedia. The debate concerns not just the quantity of online information, but the people and places reflected in the systems that organise it.
