This post is available in 2 languages:

На русском языке  • English

English

Muscovite Aliona Bogdanova’s path to editing Wikipedia came circuitously through her vegetarian diet, a diet, she said, that was at odds with the way most Russians view nutrition.

“When I was a child, I found out that where meat comes from. I decided that it’s not fair to kill animals to get meat,” she said. Her decision was not viewed favorably. “My family, they wouldn’t let me not eat meat because in Russia, people generally believe that it’s impossible not to eat meat and if you stop eating meat, you die!”

Aliona Bogdonova and her son

When she was 20, Bogdanova researched online how to create a proper vegetarian diet and became a vegetarian. She has, however, met resistance along the way, especially when she started her family.

“When I got pregnant, lots of people asked me questions, how can you possibly carry a child and not eat meat because you’re pregnant and you must eat meat?” said Bogdanova. “So I had a breastfeeding consultant who advised me to eat a little piece of meat at least once a week. I didn’t do it because I would, you know, poison myself.”

Bogdanova said she was able to find useful information in Russian about vegetarianism and animal rights on sites like Wikipedia, but, “there’s in general very little information about breastfeeding in Russia, and that has to do with the Soviet school stopping with how people have thought about this.”

Bogdanova has taken passionately to sharing what she’s learned about health and parenting with people seeking information on Russian Wikipedia.

“I wrote several articles about food, about vegetarianism. I edited some articles about parenting, natural parenting,” she said. “But I remember, my first big article is about marzipan because I’m a fan of marzipan. There was only a few words about it and maybe no article at all, and I just knew what I should write.”

To fill the time while at home during her pregnancy, Bogdanova took up soap making as a hobby. Before long it turned into a business. “When you make soap, eventually you end up making too much and eventually comes a point where…you can’t possibly use so much and you can’t find enough friends who you could give it as a gift,” she said. “I use Wikipedia as a research tool (it has so many useful links) and I share things that I learn from my business on Wikipedia, so that everyone can learn.”

Bogdanova is also translating a book about homeschooling, the Teenage Liberation Handbook, into Russian. It’s her first serious translation effort.

Natural curiosity and research drew her to Wikipedia years ago and she credits her upbringing with keeping her in the community of contributors.

“I can’t, you know, pass by something that I can improve,” she said. “Because I grew up in the family of teachers, I was raised on the idea that talking like an encyclopedia is an important scholarly work, and so when I wrote in Wikipedia, I had the sense that I had contributed to this.”

She added, “Once in a while, I find out that somebody has come across this article that I have created about homeschooling, for example, and then I am really proud.”

Profile by Donna Peterson, Communications Volunteer, Wikimedia Foundation

На русском языке

Москвичка Алена Богданова пришла к редактированию Википедии окольным путем, через вегетарианство – которое непривычно и странно для большинства россиян.

“Когда я была ребенком, я узнала, откуда берется мясо. Я решила, что несправедливо убивать животных только чтобы поесть,” сказала она. Это решение не было благосклонно принято ее семьей. “Мои родители и родственники запретили мне отказываться от мяса, потому что в России люди обычно считают, что нельзя не есть мяса, без мяса – умрешь! ”

Когда ей было 20, Богданова прочитала в Интернете, как составить сбалансированную вегетарианскую диету и стала вегетарианкой. Однако она снова встретила сопротивление на этом пути, когда создала свою семью.

«Когда я забеременела, многие люди задавали мне вопросы, как возможно выносить ребенка и не есть мясо. Якобы беременным мясо необходимо”, – сказала Богданова, – “мне даже консультант по грудному вскармливанию советовала съедать маленький кусочек мяса по меньшей мере раз в неделю. Я не делала этого, потому что отравилась бы”.

Богданова сказала, на сайтах вроде Википедии – масса полезной информации на русском языке о вегетарианстве и правах животных на сайтах, но, “вообще очень мало информации о грудном вскармливании в России, это связано с советской школой воспитания и ухода за детьми.”

Богданова принялась активно делиться информацией о здоровье и воспитании детей, с людьми, ищущими информацию в русской Википедии.

“Я написала несколько статей о еде, о вегетарианстве. Я редактировала несколько статей о воспитании, естественном родительстве”, сказала она. “Но я помню, моя первая большая статья была о марципане, потому что я фанат марципана. Изначально в ней была только несколько слов об этом, а может и вообще не было такой статьи, а мне было что написать”.

Беременность добавила еще один аспект жизни Алёны: новый бизнес в Интернете.

Чтобы чем-то занять время, пока сидела дома “в декрете”, она завела хобби – мыловарение, и «… когда вы делаете мыло, в какой-то момент его становится слишком много, и в конце концов наступает момент, когда … столько уже не использовать, не смылить, и даже для подарков друзьям его уже слишком много”, сказала она. Когда люди начали спрашивать, можно ли его купить, появился магазин. “Я ищу информацию в Википедии (там много полезных ссылок), и выкладываю то, что узнала благодаря магазину, чтобы все могли это узнать”.

Богданова также переводит книгу о домашнем обучении, “Teenage Liberation Handbook” (“Руководство подростка по освобождению от школы”), на русский язык. Это ее первая серьезная попытка перевода.

Природная любознательность и исследования привели ее в Википедию десять лет назад, и она относит это на счет своего воспитания.

“Вы знаете, я не могу пройти мимо того, что могу улучшить”, сказала она. “Потому что я выросла в семье учителей, я была воспитана на том, что энциклопедии является важной частью научной работы, и поэтому, когда я впервые написала в Википедии, у меня было чувство, что я внесла свой вклад в это.”

Она добавила: “Время от времени я узнаю, что кто-то наткнулся на мою статью о домашнем обучении, например, и тогда я очень горжусь своей работой”.

This post is available in 3 languages:

Español  •  Italiano  • English

English

What happens when a WikiWoman meets a WikiLibrarian? An editathon on women’s biographies, of course! Or at least this is what happened on May 4th at Biblioteca Salaborsa, one of the most well-known libraries in Bologna, Italy.

Wikimedia Italia organized its first event at Biblioteca Salaborsa on April 20th, an introductory workshop led by wikipedian Piero Grandesso. Thanks to the work of the librarian and wikimedian Virginia Gentilini, it was possible to renew the collaboration and organize a second event.

We had thirteen participants, some of whom came after attending the first workshop. We created five new articles and improved two existing pages, paying homage in this way to seven amazing Italian women (and also a French one!) who didn’t have the space they deserved on Wikipedia.

It is always a little shocking to discover how many relevant women are missing from Wikipedia. Amongst the pages we created was one about Hortensia, a late Roman Republic orator and one of the very few women who at that time challenged men’s authority by giving a speech in the Forum. She lived during the civil war that took place after Julius Caesar’s assasination, a period when the Roman Republic was struggling with many war expenses. Hortensia debated in the Roman Forum against a tax imposed on wealthy Roman women, arguing that it was not legitimate to demand that women’s properties finance a war in which they had no active role. Eventually the number of women affected by the tax was reduced.

As one can imagine, we study a lot of Ancient Roman history in Italy. Latin literature and language are also compulsory teachings in some secondary schools. But Hortensia’s page, already in other language versions, was not yet on Italian Wikipedia.

Beside the creation of content on Wikipedia, the editathon was also an occasion to put together and share the different skills and competencies of the organizers. The team was composed of Virginia Gentilini, Wikimedia Italia member Ginevra Sanvitale and Commons and Italian Wikipedia sysop Elitre, who worked together, each one according to her area of expertise. We also had a chance to learn and confront a number of related Wikimedia topics.

Finally, the role played by Salaborsa as a center of cultural creation and knowledge circulation was very important.

In 2012, Wikimedia Italia reached out to Italian librarians and libraries for the first time, discovering many possible ways of collaboration. Wikipedia workshops for patrons of libraries are one of these, and they are particularly interesting because of their cultural and social implications. Working on Wikipedia in libraries can bridge the gap between print, traditional resources of information and the lively and active community of Wikipedians. But it can contribute to bridge the Wikipedia Gender Gap too: public libraries in Italy are traditionally used by women more than men, and they can therefore be a perfect place to find women interested in connecting their love of reading to a more participative and empowering way to enrich their cultural life. More women attended the editathon indeed, showing enthusiam and asking for further opportunities to work in this direction.

Librarians in Italy are traditionally mostly women too. It will be interesting to see how many successful ways of collaboration we’ll manage to find, both working directly with patrons inside the libraries, and at a more general level of interaction between bibliographic data held by National Libraries and Wiki Projects. There is such a large amount of useful work to do!

Ginevra Sanvitale, Wikimedia Italia. With the collaboration of Virginia Gentilini

Italian

Cosa succede quando una Wikipediana incontra una WikiBibliotecaria? Un editathon su biografie femminili, ovviamente! O per lo meno questo è quello che è successo il 4 maggio in Biblioteca Salaborsa, una delle biblioteche più famose di Bologna.

Wikimedia Italia ha organizzato il suo primo evento in Salaborsa il 20 aprile, un workshop introduttivo tenuto dal wikipediano Piero Grandesso. Grazie al lavoro della bibliotecaria e wikimediana Virginia Gentilini è stato possibile rinnovare la collaborazione e organizzare un secondo evento.

Abbiamo avuto tredici partecipanti, alcuni dei quali arrivati direttamente dal primo workshop. Abbiamo creato cinque nuovi articoli e migliorato due pagine esistenti, omaggiando in questo modo sette fantastiche donne italiane (e anche una francese!) che non avevano ancora lo spazio che meritavano su Wikipedia.

È sempre un po’ scioccante scoprire quante donne rilevanti mancano su Wikipedia. Tra le pagine che abbiamo creato ce n’è una su Ortensia, un’oratrice della tarda Repubblica romana e una delle pochissime donne che a quei tempi sfidarono l’autorità maschile tenendo un discorso nel Foro. Ortensia visse durante la guerra civile iniziata dopo l’assassinio di Giulio Cesare, un periodo di grandi spese militari per Roma. Ortensia discusse nel Foro contro una tassa imposta sulle romani benestanti, sostenendo che non fosse legittimo chiedere alle donne romane di impegnare i loro patrimoni per una guerra in cui non avevano avuto un ruolo attivo. Alla fine, il numero di donne colpite dalla tassa fu diminuito.

In Italia studiamo tanta storia romana. Basti pensare che la lingua e la letteratura latina sono ancora materie obbligatorie in diverse scuole superiori. Eppure la pagina di Ortensia, già esistente in altre versioni linguistiche, non era ancora presente su Wikipedia in italiano.

Oltre alla creazione di contenuti su Wikipedia, l’editathon è stato anche un’occasione di mettere insieme e condividere le diverse abilità e competenze delle organizzatrici. Il team era composto da Virginia, Ginevra Sanvitale di Wikimedia Italia e l’amministratrice di Commons e Wikipedia in italiano Elitre, che hanno lavorato insieme ognuna in accordo al proprio campo di esperienza. Abbiamo anche avuto la chance di approfondire le nostre conoscenze e scambiarci opinioni su diversi argomenti collegati al mondo Wikimedia.

Infine, il ruolo giocato da Salaborsa in quanto centro di creazione culturale e di circolazione della conoscenza è stato molto importante.

Nel 2012 Wikimedia Italia ha per la prima volta iniziato a dialogare con le biblioteche e i bibliotecari italiani, scoprendo molti modi possibili per collaborare. Uno di questi sono i workshop su Wikipedia fatti per gli utenti delle biblioteche, particolarmente interessanti per le impicazioni culturali e sociali che comportano. Lavorare con Wikipedia nelle biblioteche può ridurre il divario tra la carta stampata, le risorse d’informazione tradizionali e la vivace e attiva comunità di Wikipediani. E inoltre può anche contribuire a ridurre il divario di genere: le biblioteche pubbliche italiane sono tradizionalmente utilizzate dalle donne più che dagli uomini e possono dunque essere il luogo perfetto per trovare donne interessate a collegare il loro amore per la lettura a una modalità maggiormente partecipativa e responsabilizzante di arricchimento della loro vita culturale. Molte donne, infatti, hanno partecipato all’editathon, mostrando entusiasmo e chiedendo altre occasioni di lavoro in questa direzione.

Gli stessi bibliotecari in Italia sono, tradizionalmente, per la maggior parte donne. Sarà interessante vedere quanti altri modi riusciremo a trovare per collaborare, sia lavorando direttamente con gli utenti all’interno delle biblioteche, sia a un livello di interazione più generale tra i dati bibliografici custoditi dalle biblioteche nazionali e i progetti Wiki. C’è così tanto lavoro utile da fare!

Ginevra Sanvitale, Wikimedia Italia. Con la collaborazione di Virginia Gentilini

Spanish

¿Qué sucede cuando WikiWomen se junta con una Wikibiblitecaria? Un editatón de biografías de mujeres, por supuesto! O al menos esto es lo que sucedió el 4 de mayo en la Biblioteca Salaborsa, una de las bibliotecas más conocidas en Bolonia, Italia.

Wikimedia Italia organizó su primer evento en la Biblioteca Salaborsa el 20 de abril, un taller de introducción realizado por el wikipedista Piero Grandesso. Gracias a la labor de la bibliotecaria y wikimedista Virginia Gentilini, se logró renovar la colaboración y organizar un segundo evento.

Teníamos trece participantes, algunos de los cuales vinieron después de asistir al primer taller. Hemos creado cinco nuevos artículos y mejoramos dos páginas existentes, rindiendo homenaje de esta manera a siete mujeres italianas increíbles (y también una francesa!) Que no tenían el espacio que merecen en Wikipedia.

Siempre es algo impactante descubrir cuántas mujeres relevantes no están en Wikipedia. Entre las páginas que hemos creado había un sobre Hortensia, una oradora de la república romana tardía y una de las pocas mujeres que en ese momento desafiaron la autoridad de los hombres, dando un discurso en el Foro. Ella vivió durante la guerra civil que tuvo lugar después del asesinato de Julio César, un período en que la República Romana estaba luchando contra las consecuencias económicas de la guerra. Hortensia debatió en el Foro Romano en contra de un impuesto aplicado a las mujeres romanas adineradas, con el argumento de que no era legítimo exigir que las mujeres financiaran con su propiedad una guerra en la que no tenían ningún papel activo. Eventualmente se redujo el número de mujeres afectadas por el impuesto.

Como se puede imaginar, estudiamos mucho de la historia antigua de Roma en Italia. La literatura y la lengua latina también son materias obligatorias en algunas escuelas secundarias. Pero la página de Hortensia, que ya existía en otros idiomas, todavía faltaba en la Wikipedia en italiano.

Además de la creación de contenidos en Wikipedia, el editatón fue también una ocasión para reunir y compartir las diferentes experiencias y habilidades de los organizadores. El equipo estaba compuesto por Virginia, la integrante de Wikimedia Italia Ginevra Sanvitale y el administrador de Commons y Wikipedia en italiano Elitre, quienes trabajaron juntos, cada uno de acuerdo a su área de especialización. También tuvimos la oportunidad de aprender y hacer frente a una serie de temas relacionados con Wikimedia.

Por último, el papel desempeñado por Salaborsa como centro de creación cultural y difusión del conocimiento fue muy importante.

En 2012 Wikimedia Italia se dirigió a los bibliotecarios y las bibliotecas italianas por primera vez, descubriendo muchas formas posibles de colaboración. Talleres de Wikipedia para usuarios de las bibliotecas son una de ellas, particularmente interesantes debido a sus implicaciones culturales y sociales. Trabajar con Wikipedia en las bibliotecas puede cerrar la brecha entre los recursos tradicionales de información impresos y la comunidad viva y activa de wikipedistas. Pero también puede contribuir a reducir la brecha de género en Wikipedia: las bibliotecas públicas en Italia se utilizan tradicionalmente más por mujeres que por hombres, y por lo tanto pueden ser el lugar perfecto para encontrar mujeres interesadas en conectar su amor por la lectura con una manera más participativa y de empoderamiento para enriquecer su vida cultural. La mayoría de las mujeres que asistieron a la editatón de hecho, mostraron su entusiasmo y preguntaron acerca de las oportunidades de continuar trabajando en esta dirección.

La mayoría de bibliotecarios en Italia también son tradicionalmente mujeres. Será interesante ver cuántas formas exitosas de colaboración podemos encontrar, tanto trabajando de manera directa con los usuarios dentro de las bibliotecas, y en un nivel más general a través de la interacción entre los datos bibliográficos contenidos en las bibliotecas nacionales y en los proyectos wiki. Hay tanto trabajo útil que hacer!

Ginevra Sanvitale, Wikimedia Italia. Con la colaboración de Virginia Gentilini

When Melisa Parisi began contributing to Wikimedia in 2007, she was only 15. Parisi, a native Argentinean, started by translating articles about the long-running cartoon The Simpsons from English Wikipedia to Spanish Wikipedia.

Melisa Parisi

Her first article was deleted because it didn’t have the correct formatting. That setback didn’t deter Parisi, however, and with the assistance of an even younger Wikipedia editor, she learned the the ins and outs of editing guidelines. “He helped me a lot, I was ready to quit when a sysop deleted my first article, I wanted to quit because it was so frustrating,” said Parisi. “Thanks to his help, I kept going.”

Once she got her footing, she began writing articles about American TV shows. With The Simpsons, she translated roughly 300 articles from English to Spanish, covering the many characters and episodes. “I was interested [in writing about The Simpsons] because we didn’t have a lot of articles about this program,” she said. “There were in the English Wikipedia but not in the Spanish, so I decided to bring them all, and I did — I brought absolutely everything to Spanish Wikipedia.”

As of 2012, she’s written more than 800 articles — including 40 Featured articles — and has made more than 27,000 edits. All that experience has helped her improve her writing and language skills. “Wikipedia helped me a lot because I learned how to write better,” she said. “It helps me in my professional career.”

Being a Wikipedia contributor even helped Parisi get a job. Since she didn’t have any professional experience at the time, she added that she edits Wikipedia to her resume and said that got her the gig. She’s now a professional text editor and translator, and is also pursuing a career as a flight attendant.

After years of contributing her own time and skills, Parisi hopes more young people will also contribute to Wikipedia. To encourage others in her community, she has taught classrooms full of students how to get started editing Wikipedia. With any luck, she’ll create a new generation of editors and contributors for Spanish Wikipedia and beyond.

Parisi is the first to tell anyone that all that’s required to contribute to Wikipedia is the desire to do so. You don’t need to be a genius or an expert on a topic, she said, you just need to have the drive to make a contribution. It helps if you love what you write about, but even the smallest changes in an existing article can make a difference.

“I realized that many people do not participate in Wikipedia because they don’t know they are able to do useful contributions,” she said. “By correcting a comma, an accent or a misspelled word you are improving an article and helping the reader who will consult it.”

Sarah Mitroff, Communications Volunteer, Wikimedia Foundation

With this in mind, we are pleased to announce the first Program Evaluation and Design Workshop, on 22-23 June 2013 in Budapest, Hungary.

We have only 20 slots available for this workshop and the application deadline ends on May 17th. This two-day event will be followed by a pre-conference workshop at Wikimania 2013. Ideally, applicants would commit to attending both events.

The first Program Evaluation & Design workshop will be held in the shadows of the Buda Castle, Budapest, Hungary

Our long-term goals for the workshop are:

• Participants will gain a basic shared understanding of program evaluation
• Participants will work collaboratively to map and prioritize measurable outcomes, beginning with a focus on the most common programs and activities
• Participants will gain increased fluency in common language of evaluation (i.e. goals versus objectives, inputs and outputs versus outcomes and impact)
• Participants will learn and practice how to extract and report data using the UserMetrics API
• Participants will commit to working as a community of evaluation leaders who will implement evaluation strategies in their programs and activities and report back at the pre-conference workshop at Wikimania 2013
• …and participants will have a lot of fun and enjoy networking with other program leaders!

We will publish a detailed agenda for the event in Budapest soon on Meta-Wiki.

During the workshop in Budapest, we will only have a limited amount of time. Therefore, we will be focusing on the some of the more common programs and activities:

• Wikipedia editing workshops where participants learn how to or actively edit (i.e. edit-a-thon, wikiparty, hands-on Wikipedia workshop)
• Content donations through partnerships with galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) and related organizations
• Wiki Takes/Expeditions where volunteers participate in day-long or weekend events to photograph site specific content
• Wiki Loves Monuments, which takes place in September
• Education program and classroom editing where volunteers support educators who have students editing Wikipedia in the classroom
• Writing competitions, which generally take place online in the form of contests, the WikiCup  and other challenges – often engaging experienced editors to improve content.

Contributors who play an active role in planning and executing programs and activities as described above in the Wikimedia community are highly encouraged to apply. Your experience and knowledge will make this workshop a success!

Hotels, flights and other transportation costs will be the responsibility of your chapter; the Wikimedia Foundation will provide the venue, handouts, breakfasts, light lunches, and a dinner for all participants on Saturday. If you’re not affiliated with a chapter and cannot afford to attend the event, please email me after you apply – we have a small amount of money set aside for those cases.

Remember, applications are open until May 17. You can apply via this Google Form.

Thanks for your interest, and I look forward to a great group of participants!

Sarah Stierch, Program Evaluation and Design Community Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation

At Rice University, students pursuing a minor in Poverty, Justice, and Human Capabilities (PJHC) must complete two core courses addressing poverty, justice, and human development. Since Spring 2010, Professor Diana Strassmann has given students in her courses the same final assignment: to create or expand Wikipedia articles about poverty and about the links between gender equality and economic development in various regions of the world. She has also trained the other professors who teach the minor’s core courses so that they can include the Wikipedia assignment.

Nadhika Ramachandran, a rising senior studying political science and international relations in addition to the PJHC minor, signed on for the first of the two core courses in Spring 2012 and learned that she would be editing Wikipedia. Nadhika was both excited and nervous.

“So many people turn to Wikipedia for information that you know your contribution can have a real impact in terms of how people view a certain subject,” she says. “Of course, that also made me a bit nervous because if I did not include certain information or an important viewpoint I would misinform people.”

For that term’s class, she significantly expanded the peacebuilding article, which introduced her to Wikipedia editing. Since Professor Strassmann has set this assignment up for both of the two core courses in the minor, Nadhika enrolled in the second class a year later. In that class, Nadhika created the Women in the Arab Spring article because she “felt it was an important issue that had no coverage” on English Wikipedia. The article explores women’s involvement in the political protests and demonstrations, including their role online.

“I love knowing that my work will educate people all over the world about an important but often-ignored topic,” Nadhika says. “The Arab world has a reputation of treating women as second-class citizens in areas like political participation, economic independence, personal freedoms, and general social status. When the Arab Spring first began, it seemed like a unique opportunity to boost the status of women in the Arab world. The protesters were pushing for democracy, increased political participation, respect for human rights, and better economic opportunities, all of which would improve the status of women. Additionally, women actually participated in the revolution as street protestors and in some countries, as leaders. However, as the new governments formed and Islamist parties won elections in most places people began to fear that they would actually curtail women’s rights. The impact of the Arab Spring remains to be seen.”

Nadhika’s class was supported by Wikipedia Ambassadors, who helped her and her classmates learn how to edit Wikipedia. The students received in-person support from university staff member Christine Cox as well as Virginia White and Joyce Chou, students who had taken the class in previous semesters. They could also seek assistance from long-time Wikipedia editors Mike Christie, Justin Knapp, and Pat Earley.

“The dedication of the other editors in the community reinforced the impact of our work and their support made me feel more comfortable when editing,” Nadhika said. After spending a few days responding to those editors’ constructive feedback, she submitted the new article to appear on the main page of Wikipedia as a Did You Know, and it appeared on March 25, with more than 1,500 views. Soon after creating the article, she was already able to achieve her goal of sharing the fruits of her academic studies with more people.

Thanks to Professor Strassmann’s advocacy for Wikipedia assignments, many students at Rice are editing Wikipedia during multiple terms. The students don’t necessarily edit in between assignments, but they’re returning to Wikipedia with a stronger editing background and familiarity with norms, so they have more time and energy to create even better content. Even though Nadhika has completed her class assignment, she plans to expand the section about the aftermath of the Arab Spring protests once her schedule clears at the end of the term.

Jami Mathewson
Wikipedia Education Program United States and Canada Associate

Chanitra Bishop.

Every day, students come to Chanitra Bishop for advice about information — everything from how to find certain articles, to what books will help their research projects. Ms. Bishop certainly has the right pedigree. At Indiana University Bloomington, she’s the Digital Scholarship and Emerging Technologies Librarian at the Herman B Wells Library, which contains more than 4.6 million volumes, including special collections in African Studies, Russian and East European Studies, Uralic and Altaic Studies, East Asian Studies, and West European Studies.

“I wanted to work in the library,” says Ms. Bishop, “because I enjoy working with people, doing research, and helping people find information.”

Ms. Bishop has found that same connection with Wikipedia. In the fall of 2010, she began helping IU Bloomington students who were writing articles for the Wikimedia Foundation’s Public Policy Initiative. That initiative, which evolved into the Wikipedia Education Program, had students write public-policy-oriented articles as a formal classroom assignment. As a Wikipedia Ambassador, Ms. Bishop works not just with students but with professors in the program. One of Ms. Bishop’s first realizations: While every student already read Wikipedia, few students realized they could actually edit and contribute to Wikipedia’s articles. Students also assumed that each Wikipedia article was written in full by just one person.

“When we explain Wikipedia,” says Ms. Bishop about the volunteer instructors, “we usually go in and do an initial talk, and a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, I never knew all of that.’ I like to show one of the videos that is about the ‘Edit’ button and how people often just ignore it. Even though it’s there, it’s like it’s not there. I tell them, ‘If you see something that’s inaccurate on Wikipedia, you don’t have to wait for someone else to fix it. You can fix it yourself. You don’t even need an account; all you have to do is click ‘edit.’”

Ms. Bishop also shows students a Wikipedia article’s “History” function, “so they can also see that even though an article today might have several different sections and be may be many pages long, when it first started out, it may have been six sentences. Often it may just start off as a sentence, or a paragraph, and then the community kind of helps build that article. So it doesn’t always just start off with someone just writing all of the information. Just one person kind of gradually can build up to its current state. So a lot of students also are surprised to see the initial, first view of the article.”

From her initial volunteering in 2010, Ms. Bishop is now Wikipedia Regional Ambassador for Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, meaning she works with Wikipedia Education Program classes throughout those three states. Ms. Bishop, who has a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science, was raised in Chicago, which is just 120 miles from Bloomington. Being Wikipedia Regional Ambassador means she often connects with students online — while never having to leave Bloomington. Ms. Bishop feels like she’s part of the bigger Wikimedia community of readers, contributors and volunteers.

“The community is what really drives Wikipedia,” says Ms. Bishop, whose Wikipedia user name is “Etlib” — a derivation of “Emerging Technologies Librarian.” “There’s not one person that’s in charge and makes all the decisions about how Wikipedia works. It’s very much community driven and it’s something that anyone can be involved in. Even though anyone can be involved in it, it’s like any other community, so the more you contribute to that community, the more people will believe what you put on there, the more respect you’ll have in that community.”

Jonathan Curiel, Development Communications Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

This post is available in 2 languages:

العربية  • English

In English

With more than 280 million native speakers, Arabic is one of the world’s most spoken languages, but the Arabic Wikipedia has lagged behind other language Wikipedias in terms of the amount of articles. The Arabic Wikipedia has only 205,000 articles — a tiny fraction in comparison to the English Wikipedia, which has 4.2 million articles. But the Arabic Wikipedia has been steadily growing over the last year, thanks in part to the efforts of college students in Egypt participating in the Wikipedia Education Program.

The Wikipedia Education Program kicked off in Egypt with a Cairo pilot at two universities, Ain Shams University and Cairo University. The chart at right shows the amount of content added to the Arabic Wikipedia by students participating in the program. In the first term of the pilot, students added about 1.85 million bytes of content to the Arabic Wikipedia — an incredible achievement celebrated at a conference in Cairo in July 2012. In the second term of the pilot, which wrapped up in February 2013, students contributed even more, with over 5.97 million bytes of content added to the Arabic Wikipedia. In addition, students who we’ve introduced to editing through the Wikipedia Education Program have contributed an additional 515,000 bytes, meaning the program has brought a total of more than 8.34 million bytes to the Arabic Wikipedia.

Volunteer program leaders organized a second celebration conference at Cairo University on February 27, 2013. Dr. Abeer Abd El-Hafez, a professor of Spanish from Cairo University, opened the conference and spoke about the spirit of the program and its importance in the lives of students and teachers in terms of skills development and new experiences. Faris El-Gwely, the education program consultant who runs the program in Egypt, shared results from the second term, and the best students and Ambassadors from the program received certificates recognizing their hard work. Students and professors also shared information about their experiences in the program. See more photos from the conference.

The second celebration conference was a catalyst for the program to grow. Two more universities in northern Egypt have joined the program, Damanhour University and Kafr El-Sheikh University, as has Saint Khadija High School for Girls in Cairo. The drive from these programs comes from past students and Wikipedia Ambassadors who want to volunteer their time to further the spread of the Wikipedia Education Program in Egypt:

• Walaa Abd El-Moneim, leader of the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University
• Doaa Saif El-Din, leader of the Faculty of Al-Alsun (Languages), Ain Shams University
• Helana Raafat and Mina Saber, leaders of the Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University
• Samir El-Sharabaty, commander of the Faculty of Education, Damanhour University

Egypt is not the only Arab World country to see growth in the Wikipedia Education Program. In the term that’s just beginning, universities in Algeria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have joined the program. All told, more than 45 classes will be editing the Arabic Wikipedia as part of their coursework this term.

In Jordan, Dr. Nidal Yousef of Isra University is one of five university professors teaching Wikipedia classes this term through the program. The Jordanian Teachers Association is also leading a program where high school students in every governorate in Jordan will be editing Wikipedia as part of their schoolwork, assisted by volunteer Wikipedia Ambassadors. Dr. Abd El-Haq Fareh of Algeria is also incorporating Wikipedia editing into his free software class this term. And Dr. Mohammed Alghbban and Dr. Sami Bin Slimah of King Saud University are leading a Wikipedia translation program in Saudi Arabia in their school’s languages department.

We look forward to seeing the Arabic Wikipedia continue to grow, thanks to these dedicated faculty leaders and students.

Faris El-Gwely, Education Program Consultant, Arab World
LiAnna Davis, Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

I completely understand why Filipacchi was outraged. She saw herself, and Harper Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Judy Blume, Louisa May Alcott, Mary Higgins Clark, and many others, seemingly downgraded in the public record and relegated to a subcategory that she assumed would get less readership than the main one. She saw this as a loss for American women novelists who might otherwise be visible when people went to Wikipedia looking for ideas about who to hire, to honor, or to read.

In the days following, other publications picked up the story, and Filipacchi wrote two followup pieces — one describing edits made to her own biography on Wikipedia following her first op-ed, and another rebutting media stories that had positioned the original categorization changes as the work of a lone editor.

For me–as a feminist Wikipedian–reading the coverage has been extremely interesting. I agree with many of the criticisms that have been raised (as I think many Wikipedians do), and yet there are important points that I think have been missing from the media discussions so far.

In Wikipedia, like any large-scale human endeavor, practice often falls short of intent.

Individuals make mistakes, but that doesn’t and shouldn’t call into question the usefulness or motivations of the endeavor as a whole. Since 2011, Wikipedia has officially discouraged the creation of gender-specific subcategories, except when gender is relevant to the category topic. (One of the authors of the guideline specifically noted that it is clear that any situation in which women get a gendered subcategory while men are left in the ungendered parent category is unacceptable.) In other words, the very situation Filipacchi decries in her op-ed has been extensively discussed and explicitly discouraged on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a continual work-in-progress. It’s never done.

In her original op-ed, Filipacchi seems to assume that Wikipedians are planning to move all the women out of the American Novelists category, leaving all the men. But that’s not the case. There’s a continuous effort on Wikipedia to refine and revise categories with large populations, and moving out the women from American Novelists would surely have been followed by moving out the satirical novelists, or the New York novelists, or the Young Adult novelists. I’d argue it’s still an inappropriate thing to do, because women are 50 percent of the population, not a variant to the male norm. Nevertheless the move needs to be understood not as an attack on women, but rather, in the context of continuous efforts to refine and revise all categories.

Wikipedia is a reflection of the society that produces it.

Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, and as such it reflects the cultural biases and attitudes of the general society. It’s important to say that the people who write Wikipedia are a far larger and vastly more diverse group than the staff of any newsroom or library or archive, past or present. That’s why Wikipedia is bigger, more comprehensive, up-to-date and nuanced, compared with any other reference work. But with fewer than one in five contributors being female, gender is definitely Wikipedia’s weak spot, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it would fall victim to the same gender-related errors and biases as the society that produces it.

Are there misogynists on Wikipedia? Given that anyone with internet access can edit it, and that there are roughly 80,000 active editors (those who make at least 5 edits per month on Wikimedia projects), it would be absurd to claim that Wikipedia is free of misogyny. Are there well-intentioned people on Wikipedia accidentally behaving in ways that perpetuate sexism? Of course. It would be far more surprising if Wikipedia were somehow free of sexism, rather than the reverse.

Which brings me to my final point.

It’s not always the case, but in this instance the system worked. Filipacchi saw something on Wikipedia that she thought was wrong. She drew attention to it. Now it’s being discussed and fixed. That’s how Wikipedia works.

The answer to bad speech is more speech. Many eyes make all bugs shallow. If you see something on Wikipedia that irks you, fix it. If you can’t do it yourself, the next best thing is to do what Filipacchi did — talk about it, and try to persuade other people there’s a problem. Wikipedia belongs to its readers, and it’s up to all of us to make it as good as it possibly can be.

Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

OPW’s robocats happy to work on their first contributions.

These days we are welcoming a new wave of candidates for Google Summer of Code and FOSS Outreach Program for Women (OPW) internships. Interested? Stop reading and hurry up! Or keep reading to learn why these free software mentorship programs are doing so much good.

Since 2006, Wikimedia has mentored 32 GSoC students. From those, only one (3.13%) was a woman (accepted in 2011), and she didn’t stick around. This number is even lower than the general percentage of women accepted in GSoC 2012 (8.3%) although perhaps it is in line with the composition of our own tech community (data missing). Can we do better?

We think we can. This is why we joined OPW last November. It was the first round open to organizations other than the GNOME Foundation, founders of the initiative. After 5 rounds of OPW, GNOME women are not an exotic exception anymore. It is too soon to evaluate results in the Wikimedia tech community, but the six interns we got during the 5th round delivered their projects in the areas of software development, internationalization, UX design, quality assurance and product management, and so far they are sticking around. We also learned some lessons that we are applying to the next internship programs. As we speak, several women are applying for Wikimedia in the current GSoC edition. A promising trend!

But there is more positive change. Paid internships are like subcutaneous injections for a free software community: in just one shot you get a full time contributor dedicated to help you within a defined scope and amount of time, with the incentive of a stipend ($5,000). The lives of the injected contributors change in the new environment. They learn and they adapt to new situations. They acquire a valuable experience that will help them becoming experienced volunteers and better professionals. At least this is the goal. But the life of the community receiving the injection also should change for good with the arrival of these full time contributors. This is also the goal. So what has improved so far in our tech community?

Scaling up complex projects

Mentorship programs require a good alignment of project ideas supported by the community and by available mentors. Thanks to the efforts of many, we have now a list of possible projects, including a selection of featured project ideas ready to start. The list includes proposals coming from different Wikimedia projects, Wikimedia Foundation-driven initiatives and MediaWiki features for third parties.

These project ideas link to Bugzilla reports in order to keep track of the technical discussion, involving the candidates, the mentors and whoever else wants to join. Full transparency! We also provide basic guidelines for candidates willing to propose their own projects.

All this has been done for the current GSoC and OPW round, but is potentially also useful in the context of other initiatives like OpenHatch, SocialCoding4Good, or Wikimedia’s Individual Engagement Grants. If you want to propose a technical project that could keep a person or team busy for 3–4 months, now you know where to start.

Improving our Welcome carpet

We are still learning how to attract newcomers.

Each mentorship program brings a wave of newcomers willing to get up to speed as soon as possible. We are betting on the “the medium is the message” approach, giving as much importance to the proposals as to the participation and collaboration of the candidate in our regular community channels. But all this requires better landing surfaces in mediawiki.org.

This pressure and the repetition of similar questions by newcomers have encouraged the creation or promotion of references such as Where to start, How to contribute and Annoying little bugs. We keep working on an easier introduction to our community through the fresh and work-in-progress Starter kit, a team of volunteer Greeters and other initiatives discussed at the new Project:New contributors. And you know what? Several former interns are involved!

Diversity enters our agenda

We believe that “a healthy mix of demographic and cultural characteristics everywhere throughout the movement is key to Wikimedia’s success.” Diversity is good for creativity and sustainability, which are primary goals of any free software community. Yet diversity in these communities tends to be quite limited, and our case is not an exception.

We have mentioned the problem of male predominance, but there are other biases and types of discrimination that we would like to help leveling. What about working on other barriers caused by abilities, age, language, or cultural, ethnic, or economic background? Just like we are doing with OPW, we can start with programs for specific audiences that we can sync with mainstream activities like GSoC, increasing their diversity. Ideas are welcome.

Quim Gil, Technical Contributor Coordinator (IT Communications Manager)

We’re happy to announce that, starting today, users of all Wikimedia projects will be able to try a new look for our account creation and login. For about a week, we’re asking all Wikimedia volunteer editors to give the update a try and help us spot any nagging bugs or errors in translation. We’ll then enable the new forms as the default on all our wikis.

The new account creation (mockup)

Help test the new forms

If you’re a current or prospective member of a Wikimedia community, we need your help. Please give the new interfaces a try, report bugs, or leave comments for us on your wiki’s preferred noticeboard.

We’re providing this week-long testing period–instead of simply rolling out the new interface with less advance notice–to get help making sure our localizations are correct and the interfaces will be bug free for the 800 or so wiki communities we support.

• See the new account creation form
• See the new login form

Both links above are to our largest and most active community, English Wikipedia, but if you’re a contributor to any other project, you can try out the new forms by simply appending &useNew=1 to either URL on your favorite wiki. You can also find more detailed, step-by-step testing instructions if you’re willing to go a little deeper with testing the forms.

How we got here

The new login (mockup)

The Wikimedia Foundation’s Editor Engagement Experiments team has been optimizing these forms, using weekly controlled tests to measure the impact of our new signup form and iterate on our ideas. (See our original announcement.)

Overall, the results of these experiments were encouraging. Using English Wikipedia as our proving ground, our most successful experiment gained around 800 additional signups over a two week period. The relative increase in conversion was 4 percent, from 28 percent to 32 percent of users successfully creating an account after visiting the signup page. The total number of new users gained will change based on seasonal trends. We also decreased the number of errors which held up users after they submitted the form by 14 percent.

This interface redesign marks the first time MediaWiki core (the platform shared by all our projects) is using the new form styles that we have experimented with in account creation, our new onboarding experience for Wikipedia editors, and in other features. The patterns we’re introducing via the new account creation and login, codenamed “Agora” by the Wikimedia Foundation design team, will now be able to be reused in a more standardized way by MediaWiki developers.

The redesigns we’re introducing to login and account creation are hardly radical. Simple use of typography, color and vertically-aligned form fields are not what could be called bold innovation in design. Nonetheless, we’re extremely happy to be releasing an experience that will make signing up and logging in less of a burden for the many contributors to Wikimedia communities, and thus enable them to create great, free educational resources.

Steven Walling,
Associate Product Manager