Tomorrow, Friday, March 15th from 11AM-3PM EST is #TooFew: A Feminist Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon.
#TooFew is a response to a lack of representation of women, people of color, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized groups on Wikipedia. As the New York Times recently noted, as of 2011 less than 13% of Wikipedia’s contributor base were women. This lack of representation is not just an issue of a hostile virtual atmosphere for those who aren’t white, male, straight, and generally privileged, but also affects whose voices are shared and what history is erased on perhaps the largest encyclopedia in the world.
In celebration of Women’s History Month, feminists of all stripes are coming together tomorrow for an “Edit-a-Thon” to work (even if just for a few hours) to address this issue.
Adeline Koh shares some great advice on how you can get involved:
Help generate ideas for new entries or entries to be improved — you can add your ideas to our working list here
Participate in Wikipedia community
- Sign up for a Wikipedia account (consider using a pseudonym at the outset, you can always change it once you’re comfortable)
- Watch this video to learn just how to edit Wikipedia. Be sure to set aside some time for this video, it’s an hour long, and we recommend clicking on FLASH — it tends to play better that way. (Although, we will provide editing help at the edit-a-thon, if you don’t have time to do this.)
Join us virtually by doing your work during our edit-a-thon. If you’re on Twitter, send out a Tweet that includes the hashtag
#tooFEWto let us know you’re out there. We’ll be live editing from 11am-3pm EST, Friday March 15.Join us in person at one of the following:
- THATCampFeminisms West: We will be working in person (at Honnold-Mudd Library in Claremont at Scripps College) from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. EST. We are encouraging all THATCamp attendees to join us and we welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us virtually.
- THATCampFeminisms South @ Emory University Library — Jones Room, 3rd Floor Friday March 15 11am -3pm EST
- Duke University: We will be working in person at the Franklin Humanities Insititute Conference Room, Bay 4, C-107, Smith Warehouse from 1pm-3pm. The event is sponsored by HASTAC and the Duke PhD lab. Anyone is welcome to join in, or if you cannot come physically, do think about joining us virtually!
Tell Somebody
- Students — Do they need extra credit? Can this be a class project? Are you learning about some really cool people in POC/Trans*/Queer/Women’s History that don’t have wiki pages or have pages with bad information? You can fix it!
- Friends — Do you know other folks who should know about this? Please spread this information to activists you know, faculty, etc. Everyone is welcome!
- Organizations — These edit-a-thons work best with lots of folks working on specific things. Do you know orgs like INCITE or SONG that know specific types of folks who should be added to Wikipedia or projects folks should know about?
Too swamped and don’t want to login to Wikipedia but would like to contribute? Add your idea to this Google doc.
So, take a few hours out of your day and put your writing skills (and feminist knowledge!) to good use. Write up an entry on an artist you admire, beef up an entry on your feminist icon, or write about any other topic that makes your heart sing. Whatever you’re up to, make sure to jump in on twitter using the hashtag: #tooFEW
Let us know how you plan to contribute in the comments, and see you (virtually!) out there.
-Kyle Albert, Blog Editor
