Join us for our Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on Sunday, March 10!
Four friends started Art+Feminism in response to studies that show that less than 10% of Wikipedia editors are women. This imbalance is reflected in the content of Wikipedia where women are underrepresented in articles. As Art+Feminism states:
The fact is when we don’t tell our stories or participate in the ways our history is preserved, it gets erased. Gaps in the coverage of knowledge about women, gender, feminism, and the arts on one of the most visited websites in the world is a big problem and we need your help to fix it.
I have been participating in Art+Feminism Edit-a-thons since the inaugural event in 2014 by providing training and technical help to new editors. When I joined The Corning Museum of Glass in 2016, I was excited to see that Rebecca Hopman and the Rakow Research Library hosted the event for the Southern Tier. Through her efforts, our Edit-a-Thons have drawn on the Rakow’s collections on the art, history, and science of glassmaking to contribute articles and improvements. This year will be no different, if you are able to join us.
Art+Feminism Edit-A-Thons at CMoG
- 2019 CMoG Art+Feminism Edit-A-Thon (see the event on Wikipedia)
- WWW (Words, Women, and Wikipedia)
- WikiGlass: Teens edit articles at Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon
Our efforts to-date have been about growing our capacity and focusing on inviting you in to participate. We’ve worked at the scale of a few artists, designers, and scientists related to current exhibitions at the Museum and Rakow Library.
To help grow our contributions on glass in Wikipedia, I wanted to leverage the data about objects in the Museum that would allow us to tackle the problem at a larger scale. Because new editors (“Wikipedians”) can be intimidated by a blank page, I wanted to give everyone a place to start. Often the biggest contributions we can make to Wikipedia are the cumulative little changes we collectively make to existing articles. With the help of the Museum’s collections team, I was able to access all the names of “makers” (a catch-all term for the architects, artists, and designers, etc., who created the objects in our collection). Using a tool that matches these names against Wikipedia, I created a list of 101 female makers included in Wikipedia or its companion Wikidata. I also created a list of another 384 female makers who do not have a page in Wikipedia (known as “redlinks” in Wikipedia terms, they are the focus of Wikipedia’s Women in Red project).
Both of these lists provide ample opportunities for you to improve the representation of women in Wikipedia and also to build your Wikipedia editing skills. Whether or not you can join us on March 10, I hope these lists inspire you to see Wikipedia in a new light.