Re Sydney's point about women and reliable sources, I have been involved in quite a
few editathons now (I'm the GLAM organiser for Wikimedia UK). Several editathons I
have been involved in were targeting the gender gap, and the issue of women being
underrepresented in primary and secondary sources often comes up.
What I have now started pointing out to people who raise it is that Wikipedia is a
Tertiary source, we can work on under representation of the secondary sourced material,
and run editathons where there is access to offline secondary sources but we need others
to redress gaps in the secondary sources. Of course the risk with that approach is that
some of the feminists who come to those events then spend their time creating secondary
sources rather than editing Wikipedia.
Another tack I would commend to everyone here is that editathons usually have a to do
list, and people are unlikely to object if you add relevant articles to it. For example we
have an editathon coming up at the cinema museum for the 100th anniversary of the release
of "The Tramp", that isn't one of our Gendergap events, instead it is an
anniversary event - improving relevant Wikipedia articles in advance of an anniversary.
However I added the article on Edna Purviance as a relevant one to improve in the
editathon, I expect there will be other similar opportunities.
Regards
Jonathan/WereSpielChequers
On 30 Jan 2015, at 19:54, Sydney Poore
<sydney.poore(a)gmail.com> wrote:
One of the issues that faces anyone who tries to create Wikipedia articles about women is
that there is less details about their accomplishments in reliable sources. This piece
highlights the problem.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/30/colleen-mcculloch-well…
For this reason, it is great for us to form initiatives with outside organizations who
generate content so we can reinforce the importance of creating material that covers
women's accomplishments in a greater level of detail.
Our initiatives are a two way street. Working inside of GLAMs (Galleries, libraries,
archives, museums), universities, government agencies, not for profit organizations of
all types gives us an opportunity to talk about the best way that an organizations can
create material suitable for Wikipedia. And we gain a better understanding of how their
content can be shared with the wikimedia movement.
Wikipedian in Residence is one way for people to create initiatives with outside
organizations. Having women in these positions helps to decrease biases. Some women are
doing an awesome job in these positions now and in the past.
My experience working at Cochrane Collaboration as Wikipedian in Residence is positive
and I encourage women to apply for these position when they are posted.
Also, we can approach organizations that would be good partners for creating content
about women and organize initiatives with them.
If there is a strong interest, maybe we could have a google hangout call to talk about
this in more detail.
Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Wikipedian in Residence
at Cochrane Collaboration
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