The TREC Fair Ranking Track aims to provide a platform for participants to develop and evaluate novel retrieval algorithms that can provide a fair exposure to a mixture of demographics or attributes, such as ethnicity, that are represented by relevant documents in response to a search query. For example, particular demographics or attributes can be represented by the documents' topical content or authors. The 2021 Fair Ranking Track adopted a resource allocation task. The task focused on supporting Wikipedia editors who are looking to improve the encyclopedia's coverage of topics under the purview of a WikiProject. WikiProject coordinators and/or Wikipedia editors search for Wikipedia documents that are in need of editing to improve the quality of the article. The 2021 Fair Ranking track aimed to ensure that documents that are about, or somehow represent, certain protected characteristics receive a fair exposure to the Wikipedia editors, so that the documents have an fair opportunity of being improved and, therefore, be well-represented in Wikipedia. The under-representation of particular protected characteristics in Wikipedia can result in systematic biases that can have a negative human, social, and economic impact, particularly for disadvantaged or protected societal groups.

翻译：TREC公平排序赛道旨在为参与者提供一个平台，用于开发和评估新型检索算法，这些算法能够针对搜索查询所返回的相关文档所代表的混合人口统计特征或属性（如种族）实现公平曝光。例如，特定人口统计特征或属性可通过文档的主题内容或作者来体现。2021年公平排序赛道采用了资源分配任务，重点关注如何支持维基百科编辑提升百科在某个维基项目管辖范围内的主题覆盖质量。维基项目协调员和/或维基百科编辑会搜索需要编辑以提升文章质量的维基百科文档。该赛道旨在确保涉及或代表特定受保护特征的文档能够获得维基百科编辑的公平曝光，从而使这些文档有公平的机会得到改进，进而在维基百科中得到充分呈现。特定受保护特征在维基百科中的代表性不足可能导致系统性偏见，进而对社会群体（尤其是弱势群体或受保护群体）产生负面的人文、社会及经济影响。