Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

This past Sunday, Mar. 25, Exeter held its first Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon for three hours in the Library Commons. The event was a branch of the larger, international Art+Feminism campaign that has been working to improve coverage of women and arts by editing Wikipedia articles. This is the campaign’s fifth year, with the month of March marking America’s National Women’s History month.

The edit-a-thon kicked off with a comprehensive training session. Expert Wikipedia editor and MIT librarian Phoebe Ayers walked participants through the process leading up to their first Wikipedia contribution. Participants left knowing how to create a Wikipedia account, edit Wikipedia articles using the website’s built-in text editor, check the revision history of articles, use Wikimedia to add images to articles, translate articles into different languages and more. Free pizza, snacks and t-shirts were provided for all participants.

The event was organized primarily by Reference and Outreach Librarian Virginia Rohloff. Academy Librarian Gail Scanlon had first heard about the Art+Feminism campaign at a library conference where ambassadors for the campaign spoke about their experiences hosting edit-a-thons in their libraries. Scanlon brought this idea back to Rohloff and Lauren O’Neal, the Director and Curator of the Lamont Gallery. The edit-a-thon coincided nicely with the current Lamont Gallery exhibit “Representing Feminisms.” Rohloff said, “We thought this [edit-a-thon] was a good way to reflect the exhibit.”

Ayers believes that Wikipedia’s large platform allows women to ensure that women and other minorities are not misrepresented or underrepresented in encyclopedias without facing obstacles. “You don’t need credentials or a specific background to make it better,” Ayers said.

Upper Andrea Liu also commented on how the ease of editing Wikipedia directly translated into the feminism aspect of the event. “The thing about Wikipedia is that often times you don’t realize that there are people behind the screen that make so many changes to it,” Liu said. She noted the gender gap among editors of Wikipedia: a 2011 study showed that less than ten percent of the site’s editors were women. “The fact that this divide exists is a very human-based error,” Liu said. She came to this event interested in finding out what exactly it would take in order to bring about some kind of change that would reverse this trend.

For Ayers, it was the massive scale and audience of Wikipedia that had the potential to bring about this change. “[Your work on Wikipedia can] be seen by hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people around the world,” Ayers said. According to Ayers, students have the power to make a difference by improving the quality of articles, which would make sure that the accomplishments of people who have done amazing things in the world are documented.

Yet even without the tagline “Art+Feminism,” many participants were interested simply in the concept of Wikipedia itself. “One thing we talked about [during the training session] was, ‘Do your teachers let you use Wikipedia as a source?’ We’re taught not to use it,” Rohloff said. But according to Rohloff, being able to see behind-the-scenes of Wikipedia and its operations may demonstrate its utility.

However, lower Elizabeth Kostina thought that if the library were to host this event again and there was a larger turnout, the event could be more focused on feminism instead of how to edit Wikipedia. Because this was the first year Exeter hosted an edit-a-thon, Kostina felt that the event relied heavily on teaching the participants how to edit and use Wikipedia, as opposed to actually being able to apply these skills as a tool for activism.

Rohloff and Scanlon plan to hold similar events in the future, maybe even on different themes. “There are a lot of Wikipedia projects other than Art+Feminism so maybe we could connect [one of these projects] to events that are going on in campus,” Rohloff said, citing Climate Action Day as an example. She said, “We’d definitely like to try it another time to and see if we can generate even more interest.”