By Roopika Risam and Adeline Koh
The Rewriting Wikipedia Project is proud to declare that Friday’s event was a success! As a result of the Global Women Write-In (#GWWI), 18 pages/stubs were created, and 17 pages were improved upon. If you haven’t added your outcomes yet, please add them here.
Some highlights: GWWI participants created pages for Karen Lord, a Caribbean science fiction and fantasy author; Budhan Theater, a group comprised of “criminal” tribal people in Ahmedabad, Gujurat; the novel Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, on a post-apocalyptic future of the Sudan; and the Francophone author and literary critic Frieda Ekotto. Improvements include pages on Ana Castillo, a Mexican-American Chicana novelist; Aya of Yop City, a series of comic strip albums set in Côte d’Ivoire; and Nikki Seung-hee Lee, a Korean-American artist and filmmaker.
Two of our participants, Paige Morgan (@paigecmorgan) and Michael Widner (@mwidner) were thrilled when Karen Lord herself tweeted a thank you for their #GWWI work.
@mwidner @paigecmorgan Thank you!
— Karen Lord (@Karen_Lord) April 26, 2013
The Rewriting Wikipedia Project was also featured in the International Business Times.
We encourage you to take a look at our results and to help improve our entries and contributions. Our goal is to create high-quality entries that will stick in Wikipedia by meeting its editing rules and conventions.
A Storify of the #GWWI proceedings is located at the end of this article.
CALL FOR WIKIPROJECT PARTICIPANTS
Participated in the Global Women Wikipedia Write-In? Committed to making editing wikipedia part of your ongoing commitment to public scholarship? The Rewriting Wikipedia Project is soliciting participants for a WikiProject on increasing the presence of women of color from around the world on Wikipedia.
A WikiProject is a group of editors committed to working as a team to improve the quality and quantity of articles on a specific subject. Through a WikiProject, we can coordinate resources and facilitate the writing and editing of articles within our chosen category. Learn more about WikiProjects here. If you are interested in joining us for a WikiProject please contact Roopika Risam (rrisam at gmail dot com) or Adeline Koh (adelinekoh at gmail dot com).
THE FUTURE OF THE REWRITING WIKIPEDIA PROJECT
Given the success of the Global Women Wikipedia Write-In, we will be hosting Rewriting Wikipedia Project Write-in Days (hashtag #RWP) once each semester (tentatively: in October and February). To accommodate participants from around the world, we are designating these events write-in days rather than finite events with specific times. We will, however, establish a time period during which we will be available and actively participating.
PARTNERING WITH THE REWRITING WIKIPEDIA PROJECT
We welcome groups or individuals to partner with us when we host the write-ins. If you partner with us, we can share the work of advertising for the write-in, supporting participants at different times during the day of the write-in, and building greater support for the project. We ask potential partners to keep in mind the mission of the Rewriting Wikipedia Project: to increase the quality and quantity of articles on ethnic/minority and marginalized peoples on Wikipedia.
Please stay tuned for specific details on partnering with the Rewriting Wikipedia Project, coming soon! Feel free to contact Roopika Risam (rrisam at gmail dot com) or Adeline Koh (adelinekoh at gmail dot com) to discuss partnering further. We also can be found on Twitter at @roopikarisam and @adelinekoh.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.