Karen Henderson, Centretown News
Sarah Eastman (left) and Danuta Sierhus edit Wikipedia pages on International Women’s Day.
On International Women’s Day, volunteers parked themselves and their laptops at the Ottawa Art Gallery and the Carleton University Art Galleryfor a full day of writing and research.
While this sounds like an average day for many full-time workers and students, these volunteers were charged with a task. Their mission: to create new and edit old Wikipedia articles relating to art and feminism.
“The goal of the project is to fill in two gaps,” says Fiona Wright, art educator at CUAG and an organizer of the event. “One of them is the representation of women artists on Wikipedia, and the other is to train cisgendered and trans women to become Wikipedia editors.”
It’s the third year Wikipedia Edit-a-thons will be held around the world, but the first time for Ottawa.
Katie Kendall, another organizer, found out about the group online and wanted to add Ottawa to the list of venues. “I contacted the organization,” says Kendall, “and they just let me know the way that it works.”
The organization is Art+Feminism, a New York-based group headed by art librarians, artists and scholars.
Their campaign is dedicated to holding edit-a-thons every year, and they champion more woman-centric and woman-generated online articles.
Since the first edit-a-thon at the Museum on Modern Art in New York City, more cities have joined in. This year, 125 venues hosted meet-ups around the world. The events are held in March to coincide with Women’s History Month.
On their website, Art+Feminism provide free video tutorials for using Wikipedia, as well as instructions on how to run a meet-up.
Kendall says the group was very encouraging of adding another venue to their campaign. She approached CUAG and the OAG to host, and received interest from both parties. A community partnership was formed, and volunteers could venture to whichever location was most convenient.
While not on as large a scale, Art+Feminism are not the only ones who are drawing attention to the Wikipedia gender gap.
Laura Horak, a film and women’s studies professor at Carleton, conducts a similar project for her students as an assignment. In her case, students focus on female filmmakers.
“On Wikipedia, the majority of editors are men,” says Horak. “The majority are white, in the English Wikipedia at least. A lot of topics that aren’t of interest to the editors don’t get covered.”
This was Horak’s first year participating in the edit-a-thon. She heard about it from Wright, and encouraged her own students to attend.
“It’s a good way for us to apply our skills,” says Laura Hutchingame, an art history student and volunteer. “It’s a good way to combine art history and International Women’s Day.”
Hutchingame was working on an entry for a German art historian named Rosa Schapire. She picked Schapire’s name off a list, provided by the event organizers, of women who do not have Wikipedia pages.
Once they decide on a subject, it’s up to the volunteers to determine how they want to set up the page, as long as it’s within Wikipedia’s guidelines.
“This was new for me too,” says Wright, “just how rigorous the process is to getting published.”
Wikipedia has strict rules for writers. Multiple reliable sources are a requirement. Facts need to be properly supported and referenced.
Horak says she has had students in the past whose pages have been taken down because of insufficient secondary sources.
“They don’t want original research,” says Horak. “Wikipedia reflects the imbalance that exists in independent news sources, like the media, scholarship, all of those things.”
Horak points to other groups underrepresented on the website; Black, Latino, Asian and Indigenous people face a similar lack of representation in online scholarship.
Another edit-a-thon for Black History Month, titled #BlackLivesMatter, was held in Harlem on Feb. 7. On Apr. 30, an edit-a-thon will be held at the Guggenheim, focusing on Middle Eastern and North African art.
Once the edit-a-thons are over, and the folding tables have been put away, every organizer hopes the volunteers will take their skills and their knowledge to keep writing, editing and continuously adding to the online archive.