Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone, and most articles are edited by many people over time. To accomplish this, Wikipedia is guided by five fundamental principles or five pillars:
The goal is a neutral, accurate, and free online encyclopedia available to everyone. Part of this goal is that if anyone spots a mistake, they can fix that mistake. The hope is that when changes are made, any disagreements can be kept respectful and civil.
While Wikipedia is not an "academic" source, it is a valuable resource and one that is relied upon by many people around the world.
What is an Edit-a-thon?
An edit-a-thon is a community event to teach how to edit, update, and add articles to Wikipedia. These events often have a specific subject for the event to focus on and usually involve training for new editors.
What is Art+Feminism?
The Art+Feminism campaign is aimed at increasing and improving the coverage sage of cis and transgender women, non-binary folks, feminism, and art on Wikipedia. The goal is to teach people of all gender identities and expressions to edit and improve Wikipedia's coverage.
Why are we doing this?
Getting more women editing Wikipedia is important because there is a documented gender bias on Wikipedia that can only be addressed by getting more women involved in editing Wikipedia.
Another factor is that because Wikipedia defines notability based on significant, secondary source coverage, women (and individuals from other underrepresented groups like people of color and members of the LGBTQA community) are often underrepresented on Wikipedia in part because they are underrepresented in more traditional media coverage. This also means that Wikipedia pages for these individuals are more easily marked for deletion or vandalized by trolls and is a primary reason there is criticism of these notability requirements.
Closing the Gender Gap on Wikipedia - slides from Art+Feminism
View in Google Slides || Download PDF
The Gender Gap - by Art+Feminism (YouTube)
Links to some of the pages from this video:
More videos can be found at the Art+Feminism's YouTube channel
Next Edit-a-Thon: Thursday, March 30, 11am - 5pm, Library Lab 2, Stan Getz Library
Much of this content was repurposed from the "Mt. SAC Library Wikipedia-edit-a-thon LIbguide" is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0