Changing the way stories are told – Ada Lovelace Day outcomes

  • October 20, 2016

By Ewan McAndrew (reposted from Ewan’s blog with permission)

Wikipedia has a problem with representation. Its mission is to be “the sum of all human knowledge” yet it only covers, by very rough estimates, only 5% of the number of articles that it needs to. Clearly there is a lot of work to be done. However, that it has amassed over 40 million articles in 300 languages in its short existence is quite incredible and is a testament to the dedication of its community of volunteers.

Yet the fact Wikipedia is human-curated means that it reflects the editors that engages with it. The late Adrianne Wadewitz, wrote an article on why teachers should engage with Wikipedia:

“Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit but not everyone does. You and your students can dramatically affect the most popular and important reference work in the world.

If you want your students to learn about how a small community is influenced by demographics and how they can change that community by participating in it, Wikipedia is the place to go.

Google takes information from Wikipedia, as do many other sites, because it is licensed through a Creative Commons Share-Alike license. Those little boxes on the left-hand side of your screen when you do a Google search? From Wikipedia. The information that is on Wikipedia spreads across the internet. What is right or wrong or missing on Wikipedia affects the entire internet.” (Teaching with Wikipedia: the why, what and how” HASTAC Blog February 21, 2014)

Since I began my residency in January 2016, the figure we have cited in terms of female editorship of Wikipedia is 15%. Better than the 10% of 2014 but still shamefully low. This lack of female representation also skews the content in much the same way; resulting in only 15% of biographies on Wikipedia being about notable females.

According to figures from Equate Scotland, Women in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) represent similarly low percentages (only 14-18%) of the STEM workforce. If Scottish education & industry is serious about becoming a realistic competitor in STEM sectors and Wikipedia is serious about attaining the sum of all human knowledge then both need to take action to become more inclusive spaces; and both have an important role in highlighting success stories in providing role models for young & old women alike so they can see a career in STEM as viable.

With this in mind, the university held an Ada Lovelace Day event on Tuesday 11th October 2016 which incorporated guest talks, fun technology activities and a Wikipedia editathon which created 9 brand new articles on Women in STEM and improved 9 others. The event was enthusiastically received by its attendees and attracted the attention of STV News.

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Ada Lovelace Day 2016 attendees (Ewan McAndrew, CC-BY-SA)

Articles created

  1. Tamar Ziegler translated to Tamar Ziegler here. Ziegler is an Israeli mathematician known for her work in ergodic theory and arithmetic combinatorics. Much of her work has focused on arithmetic progressions, in particular extensions of the Green–Tao theorem.
  2. Vyjayanthi Chari translated to Vyjayanthi Chari here. Chari is an Indian–American professor of mathematics at the University of California, Riverside, known for her research in representation theory and quantum algebra. In 2015 she was elected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
  3. Stefanie Petermichl translated to Stefanie Petermichl here. German mathematical analyst who works as a professor at the University of Toulouse, in France. Topics of her research include harmonic analysis, several complex variables, stochastic control, and elliptic partial differential equations. She became a member of the Institut Universitaire de France in 2013.
  4. Cornelia Druțu translated to Cornelia Druțu here. Romanian mathematician working in the areas of geometric group theory, topology, and ergodic theory and its applications to number theory. She is a fellow and a tutor in pure mathematics at Exeter College, and lecturer in the Oxford University’s mathematical institute.
  5. Mildred Sanderson translated to Mildred Sanderson here. American mathematician, best known for her mathematical theorem concerning modular invariants. She is mentioned in the book Pioneering women in American mathematics. A Mildred L. Sanderson prize for excellence in mathematics was established in her honor in 1939 at Mount Holyoke College.

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Ada Lovelace Day 2016 attendees (Ewan McAndrew, CC-BY-SA)

Articles improved

Highlighting female success stories like these is massively important soWikiProject Women in Red (the second most active WikiProject out of 2000 or so WikiProjects) hold 5 editathons every month on and gets editors from all over the world to turn those red-linked articles on Wikipedia (i.e. ones that don’t yet exist) into blue clickable links that do; whether it be Women in Art, Women Writers, Women in Nursing, Women in Religion or Women in STEM.

To date they have been very successful, averaging 1-3000 articles a month and shifting the balance from 15% of biographies on female to 16.52%. Still a long way to go but it is important for projects like these to write women back into history.

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