On 22 November, Doing History in Public hosted our second Wikipedia edit-a-thon in collaboration with Wikimedia UK, Cambridge University Library, and Cambridge Digital Humanities. After the great success of our first edit-a-thon in May, we were excited to build on the skills we’ve learned and introduce new students and staff to Wikipedia editing. It was great to welcome back some familiar faces who attended the training last May, as well as new students who joined DHP this academic year. Many participants commented on how enjoyable it was to spend a day making important changes to one of the world’s most popular websites, with good company and tasty snacks.
Our 12 editors created 5 new articles and edited another 26. They made 70 total edits, adding over 16 800 words and 69 references. The changes made to Wikipedia content during our edit-a-thon have already received 35 500 article views.
We kept the theme of ‘Out of the Shadows’, bringing underrepresented historical knowledge into the light of Wikipedia. This month’s event had a particularly French and feminist flavour. Zara Kesterton translated a page from French Wikipedia into English on fashion merchants. Chris Campbell has been working on a page about Enid McLeod, a diplomat and writer who was the first woman to lead the British Council’s French office in Paris. Alisha Ma improved the article on the Governess of the Children of France, a post held at the French royal court. Elizabeth Smith, the digital curator at the University Library’s nineteenth-century science collections, worked on pages about the self-taught French scholar Clémence Royer and the publisher Gilbert-Urbain Guillaumin. Current editor-in-chief Tiéphaine Thomason translated a page from French to English on the song La Complainte de la Butte, featured in films about the Moulin Rouge cabaret; created an English language page for the seventeenth-century travelogue The General History of Peru; and translated a page about Chinese sausages into French (our editors are nothing if not multitalented!).
As of November 2023, only 19.69% of all English Wikipedia’s biographies are about women. Projects such as Wikipedia’s Women in Red are striving to improve this statistic, and many participants in our edit-a-thon this month chose to improve and expand pages about female figures from history. Marlo Avidon created a page for Mary Evelyn, a seventeenth-century letter-writer who is usually only mentioned in passing as the wife of diarist John Evelyn. Marlo also expanded pages on the courtier Margaret Godolphin, and the fashion accessory of beauty patches – which was the subject of her recent article for Doing History in Public. Daniel Gilman expanded articles on notable eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women, including the poet Mary Robinson and the actor Fanny Kemble. Molly Groarke drew on her PhD research to improve pages for members of the Acland family, including Lady Harriet Acland and Kitty Herbert (née Acland) Countess of Carnarvon.
Last but not least, our co-editor-in-chief Beatrice Leeming improved pages on two Romanian films, 12:08 East of Bucharest and The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. Weiao Xing joined us to work on Pierre Bourdieu’s Wikipedia page, and to add citations to various pages on colonial North America. Andy Corrigan, the UL Digital Library Coordinator, wrote about Hayley Wood – a nature reserve of special scientific interest in Cambridgeshire. We were also delighted to welcome Laura Jeffrey from Wolfson College Library to our edit-a-thon, who is working on developing a similar event.
Our November edit-a-thon was made possible by the generous support of Wikimedia UK, Cambridge University Library, and Cambridge Digital Humanities. Thanks to Lucy Hinnie and Richard Nevell from Wikimedia, as well as volunteer Charles Matthews, who provided our training and came to assist on the day. Special thanks also to Andy Corrigan and Liz Smith from the University Library who helped to get our DHP Wikipedia edit-a-thons off the ground at the beginning of 2023, and who have helped facilitate the event ever since (including providing lunch at the Tea Room).
Now with two edit-a-thons under our belt, we are thinking about how to continue the project in future. We hope to keep the momentum going with an event twice a year, perhaps specialising in different themes – such as translation, which was a key part of this month’s edit-a-thon and could help us get other university faculties involved. Do get in touch if you have any ideas or suggestions!
Cover photo: King’s College, Cambridge. Author’s own.
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