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.

翻译：关于某些关键话题（如性与健康）的交流被视为禁忌并受到审查。我们如何构建关于这些话题的知识？维基百科收录了大量关于禁忌话题（如性器官与人类繁殖）的高质量知识产物。这些产物是如何形成的？它们的存在如何得以维持？这项混合方法的比较研究基于先前关于维基百科禁忌话题的工作，并采用定性与定量相结合的研究方法。我们遵循顺序互补设计，构建了禁忌条目生命周期的叙事框架，将其与非禁忌条目进行比较，并检验了其部分可量化特征。研究发现，禁忌知识产物通过多种成功的协作模式得以发展，且不出所料地，禁忌主题往往成为冲突的焦点。我们识别并描述了禁忌知识产物发展过程中的六个主题。这些产物需要在有限可识别性与碎片化意义建构的条件下，依靠坚韧的领导力和积极参与的组织才能蓬勃发展，而贡献者则同时参与新兴治理机制并构想公众受众。我们的观察对于支持禁忌等争议性主题的公共知识工作乃至更广泛的知识构建具有重要启示。