Scottish Women on Wikipedia

The Olympia Building at Bridgeton Cross.

Scottish Women on Wikipedia - In a nutshell Where?: Bridgeton Library, The Olympia Building, Bridgeton, 2-16 Orr Street, Glasgow, G40 2QH When?: Saturday, 16 November 2013, 10.00 - 16.00 Cost?: Free Participants?: Everyone is welcome to attend. We plan on having two 'getting going' sessions; one starting at 10.00 and another at 13.00 with some editing after each. Booking?: No booking is necessary. Just come along on the day. You can sign up below if you like. How do I find out more?: Click here to go to the GWL events page for the day. Point of contact: User:Graeme Arnott

About this editathon

This editathon was co-ordinated by staff and volunteers from Glasgow Women's Library. The initial suggestion for the name of the editathon was 'Glasgow Women in Wikipedia'. However, this was later improved upon to become something much more nuanced, and which better reflected the main objectives of the event.

The aims of the editathon are,

• to increase awareness of Wikipedia and the other Wiki-projects as sites of user-generated content
• to increase the number of female editors on Wikipedia (these are the Scottish women of the event's name)
• to improve the content of the encyclopedia
• to generate discussion amongst the Scotwiki community about the gender imbalance within the Wiki-community.

The content of the encylopedia will be improved by

• adding new content to existing articles and/or by creating new articles. In particular this will be related to Scottish women's history (the 'Scottish women' of the event's name)
• increasing the diversity of editors contributing to the encyclopedia. In particular this event is aimed at Scottish women, (again the 'Scottish women' of the event's name)
• developing the diversity/breadth of articles in the encyclopedia.

That last bullet-point has encouraged some interesting and on-going discussions. There is, admittedly, a certain essentialist approach to this event, and when I first talked to some of the members of Glasgow Women's Library about the subject of neutrality in the encyclopedia there was an audible laugh. As somebody said to me later 'only a man could think that language was neutral'. This raised a number of points which hopefully will continue both during and after the day. Some of the issues that we've discussed are

• that neutrality is formed within discourse. If the discourse is formed by certain dominant practices then the version of neutrality within that discourse will, likewise, be formed by certain dominant practices.
• that gender is performed through language
• that encouraging women to write about "women's subjects" is its own form of dominance

These issues of bias and dominance might be summed up in Greg Singh's question at EduWiki 2013 'What makes a good wiki?'

Participants

Graeme Arnott (talk) 12:19, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Glasgow Women's Library (talk) 10:13, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

ACrockford (talk) 14:52, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Trainees (all women):

1. Anabel Marsh (talk) 10:20, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
2. User:Alison T.M.
3. User:Elflin
4. User:Jh318m
5. User:Bookpluscoffee
6. User:Laura Dolan
7. User:Bonnieslade
8. Jane Cullingworth

Social Media

• Twitter - #SWoW
• Storify - by Anabel Marsh
• Blog post - by Anabel Marsh, also on WMUK blog

Results

Accounts

During the entire period of this project 8 new accounts were created. 100% were female.

Articles created

Isabella Elder
Jude Burkhauser
Dolores Ibárruri: addition of a Monuments and Memorials section, to give more information about Glasgow's La Pasionara statue

Articles repaired

Clare Adamson

Articles in progress

If you are still working on an article that you started during the Scottish Women on Wikipedia edit-a-thon, you can post a link here so that other contributors can help you expand and verify your work before it goes live!

Women's suffrage in Scotland draft page

Follow up

Graeme Arnott and Anabel Marsh gave a presentation to the Open Knowledge Foundation Scotland at their Glasgow #2 meeting on 18th November. This resulted in the following postings.

• Jennifer Jones, '#opendataGla livestream - part 1', video stream on bambuser, posted on 18th November 2013
• Sheila McNeil, 'Twitter timeline from 2nd #opendataGLA meet up #okfn' howsheilaseesIT, posted 19th November 2013
• Lorna Campbell, Open Knowledge Foundation Glasgow #2, Storify, posted on 19th November 2013
• Amy Guy, 'OKFN Glasgow #2', posted Wednesday 20th November 2013
• Lorna Campbell, Open Knowledge Foundation Glasgow Meetup #2, Open Scotland, posted on 22nd November 2013

Computers

A number of computers (six) have been set aside by Bridgeton Library for the event. Participants who bring their own laptop will need to become a member of Glasgow Libraries to access their Wi-Fi. I was told by a library assistant that this could be done online, on the day.

External Links

Links can be placed here which have specific reference to the project

Glasgow Women's Library - Events page

The List - Wikipedia Editathon

Training Notes

Formatting examples

Collapsible userbox tables

{{Userboxtop|Collapsible Table}}

<table class="collapsible" cellspacing="0" style="width:100%;background:transparent;color:inherit;">

<tr><th class="navbox-title">Caption</th></tr>

<tr><td>

Place your userboxes here...

</td></tr>

</table>

{{Userboxbottom}}

{{Userboxtop|Collapsible Table 2}}

<table class="collapsible autocollapse" cellspacing="0" style="width:100%;background:transparent;color:inherit;">

<tr><th class="navbox-title">Another Caption</th></tr>

<tr><td>

Place your userboxes here...

</td></tr>

</table>

{{Userboxbottom}}

User boxes

>{{User:Chamal N/Userboxes/Adopted}}

Finding like-minded communities

You may also wish to reach out to related WikiProjects to get feedback and input on your new and improved articles when you feel ready.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Gender Studies
w:Portal:Feminism
Wikipedia:WikiProject Feminism
Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's History