To celebrate International Women’s Day this year a number of groups hosted Wikipedia Editathons
NDCN teamed up with the Radcliffe Department of Medicine to host an event at the John Radclife on the 3rd March
A separate event was held at Christ Church College on the 7th March. This was led by Cristiana Vagnoni, Physiology Anatomy and Genetics and Tai-Ying Lee, Experimental Psychology.
Wikipedia could be considered as one of the foremost information sources on the internet, where changes are checked via a combination of “bots” that reject suspicious edits and also thousands of volunteers who constantly check new changes for their reliability. Millions of editors are on the lookout for misleading information, making Wikipedia an accurate encyclopaedia with information that is quickly accessible through its use of links.
Only 18.2% of English Wikipedia biographies feature women. This number has increased by 2.7% in the past 5 years largely due to Wikipedia edit-a-thons – events in which participants work together to create and edit Wikipedia pages for notable women. These efforts increase the number of female role models and help to combat systemic gender biases.
Editathons are fun and hands-on, people only had to bring in a laptop; prior experience in Wikipedia editing experience was not required.
Read the report (N.B. This document is licensed under the CC BY-ND 4.0 licence.)