Reflections on March’s editathons: Art & Feminism & International Women’s Day

Stall in main Library for promoting Art+Feminism editathon

I went on holiday to Skye at the end of March so forgive my tardiness in relating how March’s Art & Feminism Wikipedia editathons went.

March saw Wikipedia editathon events for Women’s History Month which coincided with a number of other International Women’s Day events in Edinburgh & around the world as part of Wikipedia’s Women in Red project on Saturday 5th March and International Women’s Day on the 8^th of March.

WikiProject Women in Red’s objective is to turn “redlinks” into blue ones within the project scope. The project scope includes women -real and fictional- their biographies and their works, broadly construed. From their webpage:

“Did you know that only 16.08% of the English Wikipedia’s biographies are about women? Not impressed? “Content gender gap” is a form of systemic bias, and Women in Red addresses it in a positive way. We do this by hosting edit-a-thons on various topics, and socializing the scope and objective via social media. We invite you to participate whenever you wish. There is no requirement to participate in everything we do, or to even sign up. If the objective and scope of our project interest you, please join in the discussion on our talkpage or jump in and create articles. You might like to start by participating in this April’s editathon on Women Writers. We warmly welcome you.”

However, the focus of Wikiproject Women in Red for March was Women in Art as part of a worldwide series of events themed on Art & Feminism. Happily, out of the 45 female artists featured in the National Galleries of Scotland’s Modern Scottish Women exhibition (which is on until June and well worth a visit) almost all are now recognised with a Wikipedia article (which certainly wasn’t the case when the exhibition opened in January) through the efforts of Sara Thomas and the Wiki editors who attended the three editathons we staged on this theme. The final six articles were worked on by our editors in the library and remotely on International Women’s Day itself with just one still awaiting completion.*

As mentioned earlier, if you would like to learn more about working with Wikipedia and find out how easy it is to edit using the new Visual Editor interface (which makes it more akin to utilising Microsoft Word or WordPress blogs these days) then I am running training sessions at the Main Library and the Edinburgh College of Art on 26^th and 28^th April (bookable through Event Booking).

You can also keep up with the residency at the Wikipedia Project Page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh

Or via Twitter: @emcandre

Sara Thomas – Wikimedian at Museums & Galleries Scotland leading the Art & Feminism event at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Art & Feminism Editathon at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery – 5th March 2016

Editors hard at work for the Art & Feminism editathon at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery on 5th March 2016

Content created

6 new articles created:

8 articles improved:

International Women’s Day Editathon at the University Library – 8th March 2016

Wiki editors hard at work for the International Women’s Day editathon on 8th March 2016.

Outcomes

Articles created

Articles improved

Other outcomes

Two new users trained in how to edit Wikipedia. Only one red-linked women artist remains from the 45 artists identified in the ongoing collaboration with the National Galleries of Scotland for the exhibition ‘Modern Scottish Women’: Ivy Gardner Proudfoot. Increased links with other Art+Feminism editathon organisers including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Wikimedian in Residence for Gender Equity at West Virginia University, Kelly Doyle.

The report on the successful editathon at the University of Pittsburgh, 4 months in the planning resulting in collaborations with Google Women and a full house of 80 participants, is included here: Report on Art & Feminism editathon at Pitt.