Diversifying Digital Representation: Wikipedia Edit-a-thon (October 2023)

Hybrid kick-off: October 10, 11am-2pm

Registration required

Location: Campbell Library, Room 138 OR virtually via Zoom

Organizers:

• Tim Dewysockie and Andrea Baer, Rowan University Libraries
• Jason Luther, Writing Arts
• Jessica Mack, History

Rowan University Libraries is partnering with History and Writing Arts faculty to host a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on digital representation, including in history and in alternative media. Our mission is to fill gaps in Wikipedia's coverage of people, groups, or issues that are culturally or historically relevant but currently underrepresented. The event theme is intentionally broad, in order to accommodate for a diversity of topics and interests.

This event will focus mainly on hands-on Wikipedia editing. Participants who are new to Wikipedia are encouraged to view the presentation recording from Rowan’s March 2023 Women’s History Month, which provides an introduction to Wikipedia Edit-a-thons and editing. During the live event, there will be a shorter introduction to Wikipedia editing. Librarians and faculty will also be available in person and virtually to answer questions. Participants can also continue editing online throughout the month of October.

There are numerous ways to contribute to Wikipedia, including adding citations to a select article, making small or substantial edits to an article, or even creating a new article on an overlooked topic, issue, event, or person. The event organizers have created this Wikipedia Dashboard, which will include some article suggestions, organized by topic. 

No experience is necessary. Stay as long as you like during the live session, or participate virtually during or after the live event!

Wikipedia can be edited in guest mode or using an account you create. If you plan on creating a Wikipedia account (which is required for advanced features like creating new Wikipedia pages), create it in advance.

Wikipedia recommends using a pseudonym when choosing a username for your account, rather than your real name, to protect your privacy or remain anonymous.

Advantages of having a Wikipedia account:

• Join the Event Dashboard to have your contributions to the event recognized
• Use advanced editing tools
• Create new Wikipedia articles
• Edit protected pages

For more information, see Wikipedia's page on advantages of creating an account.

If you would like to have your contributions to the event recognized, you can join the Event Dashboard using your Wikipedia account, which will show the impact of participant's work through the number of words added, references added, etc. to Wikipedia.

Follow the instructions on this page to join.

The Event Dashboard lists possible articles to edit. Articles are categorized by their "class", a measure of the quality of the article:

• Start-class = A preliminary article with plenty of room for improvement
• Stub-class = A short beginning of an article that needs more content
• C-class = An intermediate article with room for improvement
• Unrated = An article that hasn't yet been rated on Wikipedia's quality scale

See the Possible Articles To Edit page for a list of all the articles in the Event Dashboard broken down by category.

• Add citations for new information you add to articles

• Fact check articles (add citations for uncited information)

• Copy editing (fix spelling, grammatical errors, etc.)

• Fix dead links

• Add links to other Wikipedia articles

• Add infobox

• Add categories 

• Create section headings

  • Add to/create External Links section (for websites)

  • Add to/create Further Reading section (for books)

• See Task Center for other ideas

Wikipedia’s built-in tutorials:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Introduction
• https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/training

Using Wikipedia Wisely Guide

After you've gained some experience after editing a few articles, try creating your own. Instructions and tips for this process can be found on the Creating Wikipedia Articles page.