On 24 May, Doing History in Public hosted our first ever Wikipedia edit-a-thon. Edit-a-thons are events where new and established editors get together to learn new skills, and work towards improving information on Wikipedia around a theme. Our theme for this event was ‘Out of the Shadows’. We aimed to improve knowledge about people, places, and events that have been unfairly overlooked due to their race, gender, or location.
The event was an enormous success, with fourteen editors involved (many of whom had never edited Wikipedia before!). We created four entirely new Wikipedia pages and made 126 edits to another 32 existing pages. Around 7 000 new words were added to Wikipedia during our event, and 85 references were added. Our article edits have received over 133 000 views so far.
Amelia Hutchinson created a new page on the Tupinambá cape, a gorgeous feathered mantle made by the Tupinambá people from modern-day Brazil. Kate Falardeau wrote about the Guta-Sintram Codex, an illuminated manuscript from the twelfth century that is unusual because its scribe was a woman – and she is depicted in a rare illustration within the manuscript. Shea Hendry created a page for Thomas Spence Duché, an American painter who trained under Benjamin West in London after the American Revolution. Tiéphaine Thomason drew on her knowledge of early modern songs to create a page for the Scottish ballad, The Earl of Westmorland.
Our editors also made significant changes to existing Wikipedia pages by adding content, inserting citations, and improving the layout of articles. Darold Cuba, already a highly experienced Wikipedia editor who previously served as the first Wikimedian-in-Residence at Columbia University, edited pages relating to the 2019 Canadian documentary film There’s Something in the Water. Weiao Xing drew on their PhD research to improve pages about Jesuit texts from New France. Stanley Jachike Onyemechalu edited articles on Nigerian food and culture, as well as archaeologists working in Nigeria and Ghana. I tackled the Wikipedia page for eighteenth-century French fashion merchant Marie-Jeanne (Rose) Bertin, adding citations, removing unverifiable information, and inserting a summary box.
Jacinta Chen joined us online to improve pages about Timurid princes. Alex White, former editor-in-chief who initially came up with the idea for a DHP Wikipedia edit-a-thon, joined us from Kampala to edit pages about East African politicians, activists, and cultural figures.
Since Doing History in Public is mainly an online endeavour, it was a wonderful opportunity to meet in person and spend the day working together. We were also delighted to welcome some new faces to DHP through this event. The edit-a-thon generated lots of interest from staff at the University Library. We hope that the connections made across different departments and organisations in Cambridge will last well beyond this event, and look forward to working collaboratively again in future.
We are very grateful to Wikimedia UK, especially Dr Lucy Hinnie and Dr Richard Nevell who organised our training session on 17 May. Their expert advice on how to set up a Wikipedia editing account, how to create draft pages in our ‘sandbox’ area, and what constitutes good Wikipedia editing was invaluable in helping many of us fledgeling editors get off the ground. Lucy and Richard helped us run the event as part of Wikimedia UK’s Connected Heritage project, which is funded by DCMS and The National Lottery through The Heritage Fund’s Digital Skills for Heritage initiative.
During the training session and the event at the University Library on 24 May, Wikimedia volunteer Charles Matthews was incredibly generous with his time and patience. Charles ran a great training session on adding photos to Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia.
Finally, the event would not have been possible without the support of Andy Corrigan and Liz Smith at Cambridge University Library. Their enthusiasm and hard work was essential to the smooth running of the edit-a-thon. Andy and Liz helped us to secure the room booking, put us in touch with Wikimedia UK, and applied for the funding that enabled those of us attending in person to get free lunch, tea, and coffee throughout the day from the Tea Room.
After the success of this edit-a-thon, we are hoping to run another session at the start of next academic year. If you have caught the Wikipedia editing bug, you might be interested in the University of Edinburgh’s monthly meet-ups (both online and in person) which focus on improving information about women on Wikipedia.
Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram for more updates about future events.
Further links:
- Dashboard from the project event: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/WMUK/Out_of_the_Shadows_(May_2023)/home
- University of Edinburgh, ‘Women in Red’ meet ups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh/Events_and_Workshops/Women_in_Red
- Wikimedia UK: https://wikimedia.org.uk/
- Wikimedia UK Connected Heritage project: https://wikimedia.org.uk/connected-heritage/
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