Teahouse First Birthday Badge

Teahouse was launched on Wikipedia one year ago, with the hope that building a warm and friendly community space for new editors to connect with experienced Wikipedians might help decrease Wikipedia’s gender gap. The goal was to measure the impact of a many-to-many support system targeted at newbies. Would inviting newcomers to participate in a welcoming, social learning experience encourage more of them to continue on their journey from making that first edit to their 1000th?

One year later, the data shows that Teahouse indeed has a positive impact on the new editor experience for English Wikipedia, and demonstrates some promise as a gender gap strategy. New editors who visit the Teahouse make nearly 3 times the number of edits to Wikipedia articles than a control group with similar early editing patterns. They edit twice as many articles. They have twice the number of talk page discussions with their fellow editors, and they return to edit Wikipedia every week for nearly twice as long.

But Teahouse is about people and experience as much as numbers, and so to celebrate Teahouse’s first birthday, we spoke with Teahouse hosts and guests to learn about what the project has meant for them and what it might signal for the years still to come.

Gtwfan52 is a Teahouse host who first started editing Wikipedia on the day the Teahouse launched. He was invited to visit the space by Rosiestep, a long-time Wikipedian and one of the first hosts who brought hundreds of new editors to participate in the project’s early days. Gtwfan52 remembers coming for help with the Goshen College article. “I asked for an honest critique. I got a great one. They offered constructive criticism and specific instruction on how to do some things I had no idea how to do. This was followed up by some copyediting from Teahouse hosts once I put the addition in the article, and finally, by a very encouraging “atta boy” from Sarah [Stierch] at the Teahouse.”

Sarah Stierch’s gender gap fellowship at the Wikimedia Foundation sparked the Teahouse project in collaboration with Teahouse team members Heather Walls, Jonathan Morgan and Siko Bouterse.  Sarah also served as Teahouse’s first host and maitre d’. Gtwfan52 reflects that “without Teahouse and especially the kind words from Sarah, I probably would be long gone.” Today, he has made over 11,000 edits to Wikipedia and gives back to the project by hosting. “Teahouse is always friendly, and completely adopts my Dad’s favorite saying, ‘The only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.’”

Gtwfan52 now has his eye on the next generation of hosts-to-be. Among them is Anne Delong, a librarian and computer programmer who started editing just Wikipedia 2 months ago. She told us, “I am used to material that is logical and arranged according to a preset plan. Wikipedia is more like a village where the roads have grown in random directions because that’s where the first people happened to walk. The Teahouse helped me get past that until I could see the underlying infrastructure and the people that are gradually article by article pulling it toward a cohesive whole.” What does Anne wish for Teahouse’s birthday? “I hope that the Teahouse hosts keep up the good work, and attract more super-friendly people to help out. What goes around comes around!”

Over the past year, about 2000 questions have been asked and answered, 669 editors have introduced themselves, 1670 guests have been served and 867 experienced Wikipedians have participated in the project. 137 Wikipedians have served as hosts at some point during the year.

Edit counts by Teahouse visitors compared to control

Participants say the lively atmosphere of the space has been a key to its success. Host TheOriginalSoni said, “while most projects and groups had only one or two dedicated editors working endlessly to make things work, the Teahouse always had a steady stream of a bunch of cool and helpful editors who keep lurking around. Even when one of these editors is not here, there is always someone else to fill in.” Guest BeatrizBibi commented, “I’m glad to read words from real people, I always thought Wiki was about writing and reading alone.”

Last month was the most active month on the Teahouse so far: 46 active hosts answered 263 questions in the Teahouse, and 11 new hosts joined the project. Go Phightins! said, “I love it when a couple of hosts team up to answer a tough question and the proverbial light bulb goes off in the inquirer’s head.” Guest-turned-host Doctree agreed, “Yep, that happened to me. Thanks to Teahouse hosts, I began to really understand Wikipedia.”

What motivates these Wikipedians to give back to each other in the Teahouse, when there are so many other ways to spend their time? Gwickwire shared, “Teahouse enables me to empower other editors.” Yunshui reflected, “Helping new editors to build articles that meet the requisite guidelines and will improve Wikipedia is probably the most useful thing I can do here, and the Teahouse provides a tool to enable me to do just that.”

As Teahouse enters its second year, it continues to evolve. Ocaasi and Anyashy recently launched a new experiment with Teahouse badges, micro-awards to recognize hosts and guests for their participation. 11 different badges acknowledge contributions like asking a great question or giving a clear and helpful answer, and in total 250 badges have been given out so far.

To celebrate Teahouse’s first birthday, we’re giving out tasty cupcake badges, so, please drop by the Teahouse for a cup of wiki-tea and a birthday badge. In the words of Doctree: “The Teahouse is a model of civility and collaboration, an example of how Wikipedia should function. Keep up the good work…Wishing all a great Teahouse birthday. May there be many more.”

Jake Ocaasi, Wikipedia editor

Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants

Valerie Juarez, FLOSS Outreach Program for Women Intern

Valerie Juarez joined the Wikimedia Foundation as a full-time intern through the FLOSS Outreach Program for Women, an initiative of the GNOME foundation. With internships available at several organizations, Juarez was immediately intrigued by the bug management/triaging position with Wikimedia, and contacted the project manager: Wikimedia’s Bug Wrangler, Andre Klapper. She received a “very welcoming response” from Klapper, who helped her develop a stellar application for the internship.

As part of the application process, she had to make an initial contribution. Lucky for her (not so much for the bug), Juarez “discovered a bug that blocked UploadWizard when using Internet Explorer”—something she is very proud of.

Juarez, a self-proclaimed “bug wrangler in-training,” applied to the Outreach Program for Women as a way to “shift into a more technical role and to learn new technologies,” she said. Since beginning her internship on January 2, 2013, Juarez has been extremely active, even hosting her first Bug Day on January 29. She explains, “Bug Days are important because it engages the bug management and developer communities, and we work to solve issues, which makes MediaWiki better.” Even though attendance was low, the group was able to triage about 30 reports, and have fun doing it.

She plans to host more Bug Days, triage bug reports, and develop a proposal for streamlining user feedback, such as bug reports, from multiple Wikimedia sources to the correct channels. “Wikimedia has a few feedback channels: Village Pumps for support, Request Tracker for operation issues, OTRS for email responses, and Bugzilla for bug tracking,” Juarez explains. “I will compare and contrast what other open source projects do with what Wikimedia does and make suggestions on changes that could benefit Wikimedia.”

As Juarez sees it, her internship is a win-win for both her and the Foundation. “I think internships like this allow women like me opportunities to grow, gain knowledge, and connect with a community. Organizations benefit by the contributions women provide to the projects themselves and the community.”

Internships like the Outreach Program for Women help reduce the gender imbalance within Wikipedia and the tech industry. She explains, “It’s important to have women participate in MediaWiki, Wikipedia, and open source projects in general because their perspectives are important—and not just women, but men and women of color as well. The absence of these perspectives affects the type of articles that get deleted, promoted, and even created. In MediaWiki and open source in general, a limited perspective can affect which software functionality is added, removed, or even considered.” She adds, “Wikipedia, which is intended for everyone, should not be created by only half of the population.”

Since beginning her internship, Juarez has learned a great deal from her mentors Quim Gil and Andre Klapper, and looks forward to making “meaningful contributions to the community” as she continues. “I hope my project will benefit MediaWiki, Wikimedia, and the community by streamlining the feedback that is received. I also hope to continue to contribute after my internship is complete,” she explains.

Juarez graduated Summa Cum Laude from Lamar University with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics in December 2011. In the future she hopes to be “working in a technical position at a job that allows me to positively impact the world socially and technologically. I hope to still be working to attract more people (especially women) to computer science and technology careers.” While busy with her internship, she still finds the time to have a bit of fun in her hometown of Sour Lake, Texas—from playing video games and reading comics such as Batgirl and Wonder Woman to learning to sew a bed for her cat Midnight.

With every day of her internship, Juarez is learning how she can contribute to Wikipedia and Wikimedia and hopes others will join in as well, “I don’t think most people understand that they can contribute and make Wikipedia better. Like me, they don’t think they have anything to offer, but I’m learning that I can help. I hope other people will realize that too.”

Interview and profile by Alice Roberts, Communications Intern

By day, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight is a business administrator for a healthcare company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. By night, she studies diverse countries and cultures and posts her discoveries online for the benefit of anyone in the world. You see, Rosie is a prolific Wikipedia editor.

“At heart, I am a cultural anthropologist,” said Rosie, a prolific Wikipedia editor and content contributor who edits as User:Rosiestep. “Once I started college, I wanted to be a cultural anthropologist. I wanted to follow in the steps of Margaret Mead.”

As Rosie entered college, her desire to study cultural anthropology was checked by her father, who wanted her to be “a pharmacist or an accountant, something that a woman who would eventually get married and have children could do part time,” she said. “He was being practical.” Rosie went on to study business, eventually obtaining a Masters degree. Despite her college education, she still couldn’t suppress her desire to pursue her passion as a cultural anthropologist.

Then, several years ago, Rosie’s son Sean edited a Wikipedia article about a town in the Ukraine he was stationed in while working with the Peace Corps. “I’d never thought of actually making a contribution myself. I just figured other people were doing it,” Rosie said, “but when he said that, I thought it was fabulous.”

Later in the same year, Rosie searched Wikipedia for a group of books published by the Book League of America. While the publisher no longer exists, Rosie possessed an impressive collection of the Book League’s texts. She was surprised to find that there was no entry about the company on Wikipedia. It was then that she decided to contribute. “I thought, you know what, Sean edited Wikipedia, I bet I could do that too. Let me see how to do it. And so I tried to figure it out.”

Rosie had no way of knowing that this single contribution would eventually lead her to become the woman ranked with the highest number of Did You Know articles on English Wikipedia and the number four ranked Wikipedian in total (she has 697 DYKs and more than 67,000 edits).

“I edited and edited and edited, thinking you could just kind of keep doing this, just keep looking stuff up and keep writing,” she said.  “At some point, I started thinking wow, I’m building up a body of work here.”

This compulsion to edit is passed down from her grandmother, Paulina Lebl-Albala, the first president of the Yugoslav Association of University-Educated Women. Her grandmother was known for her work editing textbooks for the local university and for the translations she made of the German author Herman Hesse.“I feel this genetic pull to her,” Rosie said. “She edited textbooks, I edit Wikipedia. I feel this sense of connection with her. I think Grandma would be proud of me.”

Rosie finds inspiration in the example of her grandmother who became prolific in an area normally dominated by men. In turn, Rosie hopes that her example will inspire more women to edit Wikipedia. She admitted her shock at the ever-dwindling number of Wikipedia’s female editors. “I’ve read the statistics of how few women edit,” she said. “It needs more women.”

She hopes that other women will develop a similar love and passion for contributing to Wikipedia, that contributing to knowledge overwhelms the discomfort they may feel from the occasionally confrontational remarks made on their talk pages by male editors.

To Rosie, contributing to Wikipedia is important because it means that you are helping others receive what she describes as the “freedom of all knowledge on the planet.”

“I’m hooked.” She said,  “I’m addicted, I love to do this, I’m driven to do this.”

Wikipedia, she said, finally gave her the possibility of fulfilling her childhood aspirations. “Wikipedia has given me an opportunity to be that cultural anthropologist,” she said. “I study very interesting places and interesting people, and write all these articles.”

She continued, “I can’t not do this. I think there is a sense that I want my kids to be proud of me, to know that I am doing something that I think is really important.”

Profile by Zoe Bernard, Communications Intern
Interview by Matthew Roth, Global Communications Manager

Applying for a grant can be an intimidating process. There are forms to fill out, rationales and explanations to give, project plans and budgets to lay out. This process can be particularly intimidating for individuals who may have great ideas for exciting new projects that can improve Wikipedia or her sister sites, but who may not necessarily have lots of experience with project planning or grant proposals.

We want to find ways that make it easy to get started in the proposal process in a friendly, collaborative learning environment. We also want to create more opportunities to ask what might be the most important question for grantmakers in the Wikimedia movement. That question is not “what is the best way to spend this money,” but rather “what are the best ideas and what support is needed to turn them into action?”

IdeaLab is a new space we’ve built to help answer this question by crowdsourcing ideas, connecting projects with potential collaborators, and offering a pathway to funding in cases where financial support is needed to turn ideas into action. In the IdeaLab, Wikimedians are invited to introduce themselves and offer up their skills and interests as collaborators, to share new ideas, and to help each other turn good ideas into project plans and grant proposals.

Do you have an idea for a project that might be eligible for an Individual Engagement Grant? Need help turning it into a grant proposal? Or do you just want to help other’s ideas succeed? Wikimedia grantmaking staff are present in the IdeaLab, as are volunteers from around the world. Come visit us and let’s turn ideas into action.

The Wikimedia Foundation is currently accepting proposals for Individual Engagement Grants, due February 15th.

Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants

The other day, the Wikipedia Signpost – the English Wikipedia’s community-written newsletter – provided an update on Wikiproject Chess, which was founded in 2003 and counts over 100 Wikipedians as members.

WikiProject Chess editors have written extensively on a cornucopia of chess topics like strategies, endgames and notable players, including four Featured Articles (FAs) and 15 Good Articles. The project’s main article, “chess,” is actually one Wikipedia’s oldest FAs, achieving this quality rating back in 2002 when the FA process was still called “Refreshing Brilliant Prose.” Over the following decade, the article has had to be reviewed a few times to meet the rising FA standards.

The Signpost interviewed one of the project’s members, Sjakkalle, who is no slouch of a chess player himself, as he is an active tournament player and has a FIDE rating of 1944.

“I started working on chess articles shortly after I joined Wikipedia in 2004-2005,” explained Sjakkalle, who has created nearly 40 chess articles. “At the time, there were a number of good chess-related articles, but many were underdeveloped and many significant topics lacked articles altogether.”

On his user page, Sjakkalle self-deprecatingly recalls losing a game in his first international chess tournament last year, starting his international career by committing a blunder of exactly the kind that he himself had warned Wikipedia readers about two years earlier by making this edit to the article blunder (chess). “I should have known better,” he said. “Apparently, I didn’t.”

Even though there is no shortage of literature on chess—Sjakkalle says it’s possibly the most studied game ever—WikiProject Chess does have its challenges. According to Sjakkalle, they are missing a number of articles on the games’ grandmasters—particularly the Russian ones—and while there are many articles on openings and endgames, coverage of the middlegame tends to be underdeveloped. He also says that although many articles are well-illustrated with diagrams of chess positions, finding missing images of some of the game’s legendary players can be difficult.

Although they have already done a ton of great work, Sjakkalle is quick to put the word out that WikiProject Chess is always looking for new contributing members. “Anyone who wants to contribute will be a most welcome addition to the project!”

For more info on WikiProject Chess, read the full interview on the Signpost.

Darrin Fox, Communications Intern

Edit-a-thons are a well-established way to teach new people how to edit Wikipedia or encourage existing contributors to collaborate around a given topic. But organizing a formal edit-a-thon can take some time and energy, especially with larger events like the San Francisco WikiWomen’s edit-a-thons I helped organize in 2012. These events are a lot of fun, and we accomplish plenty of good editing that makes them worth the effort, but I often walk away from them feeling like I just ran a marathon. Maia Weinstock called the planning process for her Ada Lovelace edit-a-thon at Harvard “a whirlwind effort”, and WikiWoman Sarah Stierch and I have agreed that we probably don’t have the energy to organize them more than a few times a year. That’s unfortunate, because we’ve noticed that many women who start contributing at these events enjoy the social nature of editing together in a group and are more likely to make their next edit at another event than at home alone.

What if we started having smaller editing parties, on a more regular basis?

WikiWomen’s editing party, January 2013

Inspired by Piper Klemm’s account of a WikiWomen editing party she hosted with a couple of friends at her house in 2011, I recently invited two of my close friends to learn to edit Wikipedia. My friends are smart, professional women who have a lot of information in their heads and at their fingertips, but somehow they’ve never gotten around to making that first edit on their own. My friend Tracie offered up her living room and wifi, I brought some tasty things to eat and a bottle of champagne to help us toast the new year, and the three of us sat down for a couple of hours to talk, snack, and contribute to Wikipedia. I loved that it took literally 15 minutes of planning: a couple of emails to set the date and time, and a quick stop at the grocery store. We had a lot of fun, and yes, we edited an encyclopedia.

My friends created their accounts, and then we looked around for something interesting to work on. Tracie is a nurse, so I pointed her to WikiProject Medicine’s list of popular pages to find something in need of improvement. She jumped into copyediting the Heart rate article. Liza is a water resources engineer who has been eyeing errors in the 100-year flood article for months, so she dove in there. I’ve been working on bits and pieces for articles related to modern Afghan art and politics lately, and after giving them a few pointers on wiki-markup and edit summaries, I turned to catch-up on my own backlog.

It didn’t take long before we were too absorbed in our screens to talk much. Liza described editing like being in “a wormhole.” In about 10 minutes, my friends went from not being sure how to get started to having a backlog of articles they want to fix. “Everything I go to now, I feel the need to edit,” said Liza.

We didn’t try to complete entire articles, and we probably only added or improved a few sentences each that night. But Wikipedia is made of many edits and every contribution counts. I left satisfied that we have two more WikiWomen involved, since making that first edit is sometimes the biggest barrier to becoming a Wikipedian. Since that evening, they’ve both been watching their articles for changes and Tracie has made a few more edits in recent days. If they aren’t yet addicted to editing on their own, that’s ok. It was so easy to pull this together that I think we can pick a night to make an editing party happen every month. Seriously, all you need are a couple of friends, some refreshments and internet access, and off you go.

Experienced Wikipedians, I’m sure you have that one person who knows everything but still hasn’t tried their hand at editing. And if you’re new to Wikipedia and don’t know any experienced editors yet, that’s ok too, you can still get a few friends together to do this. Wikipedia has introductory help pages, a help desk, and the friendly folks at the Teahouse will be happy to quickly answer questions from new editors in their Q&A forum.

I’m attending my next editing party later this week, and plan to host another one for WikiWomen’s History Month in March. You should too, and tell us how it went in the comments. Having someone there to celebrate when you see your first edit live on the page really is a whole lot of fun, I promise.

Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants and volunteer WikiWoman

David Corral Gadea’s photo of the Roman Aqueduct in Segovia, Spain, Wikimedia Commons POTD for 22 January 2012.

As an active contributor to Wikimedia Commons, Spaniard David Corral Gadea understands the advantages of taking part in a community of fellow photo enthusiasts. For him, the project serves as a tool for sharing the wonders of his own culture and history with the rest of the world.

Although he is not a photographer by trade, Gadea has been able to utilize his skills in his work as a graphic designer and a web designer. He explained that his parents introduced him to the world of photography, as they took an interest in the process of capturing and collecting images as amateurs. However, he attributes his growing interest in photography to the encouragement of his partner, who gave him the confidence to share his photos with the world. “It was my partner who has been encouraging me to introduce my photos to competitions and enhance that facet of my creativity,” said Gadea. “I think she made a good point because it hasn’t been going badly.”

Since publicly displaying his images on Commons, Gadea has had personal success within the larger community. Not only has his image of the Roman Aqueduct in Segovia, Spain, been chosen as the Commons Photo of the Day, but it has also been awarded second prize in the worldwide Wiki Loves Monuments photo competition. To capture the image, Gadea took advantage of a family vacation. “I have been fortunate to be in interesting places, while always having my camera with me,” he said.

“The day I took this photograph there was a spectacular blue sky. It was a beautiful day of summer with good weather and we had a fantastic night wandering around the old town, taking pictures and enjoying the friendliness of the people of Segovia,” he said.

Gadea also explained how he has always been drawn to images with an epic quality about them, which has greatly influenced his own work. In his Aqueduct photo, Gadea utilized a low angle to create a larger-than-life quality, while still focusing on the beauty of the natural world around him. “I have always been struck by the pictures that are out of the norm, spectacular photographs that take you to cry, WOW!” he explained.

Gadea expressed his surprise upon learning of his placing in the Wiki Loves Monuments competition. He added that he hopes similar competitions will inspire more amateur photographers to contribute to Commons and Wikipedia.

“It was a pleasant surprise to discover that my picture had been awarded,” he said. “I am very proud that my contribution has helped bring attention once again to an emblematic monument as the Aqueduct of Segovia. I warmly thank the effort and work of each and every one of the people who have made and will enable these projects and many others that will do so in the future.”

Jawad Qadir, Communications Intern

As many in the Wikimedia community are aware, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Directors recently approved the creation of new models of affiliation known as thematic organizations and user groups. Thematic organizations are incorporated independent nonprofits that will support work focusing on a specific topic area within or across countries, regions and languages with certain permissions to use WMF marks. User groups are open membership groups which are granted limited use of Wikimedia marks for publicity related to events and projects. Both types of entities are unprecedented structures within the movement, and have the potential to move our mission forward in constructive and innovative ways.

One important feature of the new movement entity is the name under which it will operate, which is a key means for how it will present itself not just to the Wikimedia community but to the public. You can find my initial thoughts on naming the Thematic organizations talk page here and I’ve elaborated on those thoughts here. Other views can be found elsewhere on the talk page.

The new entities will help represent the movement and so the decisions we make in these initial stages may be of interest to many. In recognition of the fact that our community consists of many thoughtful and diverse voices, we invite and encourage everyone to participate in the discussion on naming models for new entities.

Geoff Brigham, General Counsel, Wikimedia Foundation

This week the Wikimedia Foundation launched a new grantmaking program called Individual Engagement Grants. These grants support individual Wikimedians or small teams to complete projects that benefit the Wikimedia movement, lead to online impact, and serve our mission, community and strategic priorities.

In recent years, the Wikimedia Foundation has been expanding its grantmaking activities. We want to ensure that the donations made by people who rely on Wikipedia for information serve the Wikimedia movement wherever it is most needed. Most of the grants we’ve made to this point have gone to organizations – Wikimedia chapters around the world, or smaller groups hosting workshops or running editing contests and so forth – and we’ll be continuing to grow our capacity to support these organizations in the future.

But much of Wikipedia and its sister sites run off of the amazing work that volunteers do individually. Thousands of people sit at their computers each day, writing articles, fighting vandalism, teaching new editors how to get started, organizing features for the main page, resolving disputes, answering emails from readers and more. These individuals make Wikipedia work, and many of them have ideas for innovative new projects that can make Wikipedia work even better. Many of these ideas can be and are accomplished by volunteers alone – volunteerism is, after all, the wonderful core of Wikimedia’s sites. But sometimes funding for time and expenses is needed to get an initiative up and running, and this is where Individual Engagement Grants can help. These grants are intended for projects that go beyond content contribution to innovate something that benefits the community and when funding is needed to to turn good ideas into action.

We’re accepting a first round of proposals for Individual Engagement Grants from now until February 15th. We’re also seeking volunteers to serve on a committee to help select the first round of grantees. You can get involved by sharing a project idea, submitting a proposal, or joining the committee – we’re looking forward to having your participation and to announcing the first Individual Engagement grantees in March!

Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants, Wikimedia Foundation

Wikipedian Dr. Adrianne Wadewitz will participate in the first ever Ask a WikiWoman event on January 17

“What’s it like to be a Wikipedian?”

“How did you get started editing?”

“How do you make an account on Wikipedia?”

“How do you upload a photo on Commons?”

…those are just some of the many questions that people often ask those of us who edit Wikipedia and contribute to its sister projects. Do you have questions similar to these that you’ve always wanted to ask a Wikipedian?

Well now your chance. WikiWoman Dr. Adrianne Wadewitz will be answering your questions by participating in the first Ask a WikiWoman online event.

On Thursday, January 17, the WikiWomen’s Collaborative will host Ask a WikiWoman via their Twitter! Participants from around the world will have a chance to ask Adrianne, a Wikipedian since 2004, anything about Wikipedia. The event will take place from 10 AM PST (18:00) until 5:00 PM PST (01:00) via the @WikiWomen Twitter.

How do I ask a question?

To participate, you have to have a Twitter account. Twitter is free to join if you aren’t a member yet. After logging in to your Twitter account, ask your question and include hashtag #askawikiwoman in your question. Adrianne will then answer your question!

Who is Adrianne Wadewitz?

Dr. Adrianne Wadewitz, aka User:Wadewitz, has been a Wikipedian since 2004. She’s a “feminist, scholar, educator, and digital humanist,” and has a deep passion for empowering women to contribute to Wikipedia and for helping to provide women around the world with access to free knowledge. As an educator, she has participated in the Wikipedia Education Program, where she has used Wikipedia in the class room as a learning tool since 2011. With a PhD in English Literature from Indiana University, Adrianne has channeled her passion for literature into her Wikipedia contributions. She was a leading force in bringing articles about Mary Wollstonecraft and the life of Jane Austen to Featured Article status, making them some of the finest articles on English Wikipedia.

“I’m thrilled to be part of the first “Ask a WikiWoman” event,” she said. “Nothing quite demystifies Wikipedia and encourages people to participate as a real person who can answer questions about this strange and wonderful website. I’m a Wikipedian. Ask me anything.”

And we hope you will do just that – ask a WikiWoman anything. We’ll see you on Twitter on Thursday, January 17!

Sarah Stierch, Wikimedia Community Fellow