We regularly run Wiki Scholars courses throughout the year, but the way this course came to be was especially important to us. “We are so grateful to the estate of B.B. Clark for generously supporting this Wiki Scholars course,” said Andrés Vera, Wiki Education’s Equity Outreach Coordinator, who made this connection. “Mr. Clark was a victim of the AIDS pandemic and vowed that none of his anti-gay family would receive a portion of his estate. While so many people try to erase the stories of LGBTQ+ people, in the after life, Mr. Clark is helping us preserve LGBTQ history.”

You can see one example of improving the historical record in the article about AIDS activist Reggie Williams. It is now a substantial Wikipedia biography, thanks to Wiki Scholar Dan Royles. Before the course, Reggie’s biography did mention his activism work. But after the course, the biography tells a much deeper story of his life-mission making AIDS education and services more culturally relevant for gay and bisexual men of color. You can now read about Reggie’s impact at both a local and national level. He became an adviser to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the San Francisco Department of Public Health, submitted a proposal to the Centers for Disease Control’s national AIDS education program, and was instrumental in starting multiple organizations for on-the-ground AIDS education in San Francisco.

In addition to Reggie William’s biography, Ruth Bleier now has a more detailed one. Wiki Scholar Jenny Lenkowski worked on it, enhancing sections about the neurophysiologist’s activism work during the era of McCarthyism. Ruth was an early explorer of how gender bias affected her field and she advocated for change. In addition to following her own personal mission to better represent a diversity of scientists on Wikipedia, Jenny — as an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Goucher College who teaches with Wikipedia — has new perspective to take back to her Wikipedia assignments.

“This course was a great way for me, as an instructor who has assigned Wiki Education projects in my classes, to more intentionally contribute to Wikipedia in a meaningful way myself,” Jenny told us. “I try to emphasize to my students the benefits of us contributing to Wikipedia to increase the diversity of Wikipedians and to also consider profiling scientists from underrepresented groups for their project, so this was a great opportunity for me to explore and contribute to biographies of scientists in the LGBTQ+ community. It took me quite a while to finally decide what page I would be working on, something I see some students struggle with as well. I also benefited from weekly discussions of how projects were going, something I’ll be more intentional about doing next time I assign a similar project.”

One more example comes from Wiki Scholar Sara Moore, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Salem State University, who greatly expanded Rachel Levine’s biography page. Rachel Levine made history as the first openly transgender government official to hold an office requiring a Senate confirmation, serving as assistant secretary of health since 2021. Sara added a section to Levine’s biography about her commitment to solving US health disparities, especially as they relate to LGBTQ+ youth.

“You feel empowered when you learn how to contribute meaningfully to a body of knowledge that so many people draw on,” Sara told us. “It’s also important to bolster the stories and experiences of underrepresented groups of people and their histories.” Although there is a lot more work to do regarding the preservation of LGBTQ history, we’re pleased courses like this can have such an impact on Wikipedia.

If you’d like to peruse more great work that came out of our first iteration of this course, follow this link.

Thumbnail image shows Rachel Levine and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre holding a Pride flag in 2022. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Anne Brown has deep experience in design, writing, and editing across a long career in corporate communications as a graphic designer and then communication director. More recently, she’s been intrigued by graphic design history. So when the opportunity popped up to take a Wikipedia editing course sponsored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Anne seized it.

“The AIGA Wikipedia course offered an opportunity to become a Wikipedia editor and share my research with others,” she says.

And share she did. Anne started by creating the Wikipedia article for Henrietta Condak, an influential designer who worked for CBS Records during the 1970s.

“Although Condak blazed a trail for other women to follow, she had no article on Wikipedia,” Anne notes. One of Condal’s colleagues, Carin Goldberg, did have an article, but its quality assessment was what’s known on Wikipedia as a “stub” — a short, underdeveloped article. Anne expanded that article too.

Then she noticed that graphic designer Joseph Binder lacked an article. Anne was able to find extensive information about him, so she wrote a longer biography for Wikipedia. This article even appeared on Wikipedia’s home page, in the “Did you know” section.

All of Anne’s contributions were possible thanks to the AIGA Wiki Scholars course she took.

“The class fully prepared me to write a Wikipedia article,” she says. “The short online tutorials were extremely helpful and I’ve continued to refer to them when I forget how to handle a certain step in the process. More importantly, our instructor, Will Kent, was supportive and encouraging.”

And just because the course is now over doesn’t mean Anne has stopped writing. Like many who catch the Wikipedia bug, once she saw the gaps in coverage, she’s started tackling them. Anne says she’s made a list of all AIGA medalists who lack Wikipedia articles, and is working on several of them.

“While much of design writing only appears in industry publications, Wikipedia is the go-to resource for people across the world,” Anne explains. “By increasing the number of Wikipedia articles that highlight diversity in graphic design, a broader and more diverse group of people are encouraged to engage in graphic arts.”

And even though she’s written several articles now, Anne still finds joy in the process.

“Now that I’ve retired from corporate life, my focus is on sharing what I’ve learned with others to enable the next generation of designers to attain their creative aspirations. One way to do this is through making the stories of other designers accessible through Wikipedia,” she says. “I get a big thrill when I’m finally able to post an article I’ve been working on and see it come up in Google search.”

Interested in a course like the one Anne took? Encourage any organizations you’re a member of to partner with Wiki Education to host a similar course. Visit wikiedu.org/partnerships for more information.

In four Wiki Scholars courses, museum professionals who work at one of the Smithsonian’s nearly 200 Affiliates collaborated with each other and Wiki Education’s team to add and expand biographies of notable women on Wikipedia. Over 6 weeks, they learned how to use Wikimedia projects as tools in their work to preserve and share knowledge with the public. All told, we trained 74 museum professionals how to edit Wikipedia, representing 53 different Smithsonian Affiliate museums, and they improved more than 160 articles. By embedding Wikipedia know-how within their institution, the Smithsonian has developed a network of new Wikipedians to continue this important work both through their own editing and through organizing local projects.

This is the story of how we worked together to bring high-quality information about historic women to the public — and how other organizations can make that happen for their faculty, staff, or members.

There are two key components to this project:

1. museum professionals from across the United States learn how to edit Wikipedia; 
2. we expand public knowledge of notable American women from across the U.S. by leveraging museum collections and materials.

1) Wiki Scholars courses teach museum professionals how to edit Wikipedia

During the 6-week courses, Wiki Education’s team of Wikipedia experts facilitated collaborative group sessions among the museum professionals and provided ongoing support as the scholars made their first edits. We worked together as they incorporated published information about notable and underrepresented American women from their collections onto Wikipedia, helping them navigate Wikipedia’s technical, procedural, and cultural practices. One participant reported that “it was great to have timely responses to even the smallest questions. It was also great to just have a safe environment in class to be confused while starting up the project.” When asked if the experience met their expectations, one participant said, “YES! I was eager to learn the back-end and was gobsmacked about how much actually goes into the development and editing of pages. I really had no idea about the back end of how the Wikipedia process comes together.”

Our tried-and-tested Wiki Scholars course curriculum brings “newbies” into the community in a relatively short period, and we’re thrilled with how much participants enjoy the whole experience. One said that the course “exceeded [their] expectations with an exceptionally well thought out curriculum and a thoughtful instructor who made the content digestible.”

On top of learning how Wikipedia works, this course gave employees across Smithsonian Affiliate institutions the unique chance to collaborate with each other and learn about work at other museums.

Now, they’re primed to continue adding archival materials to Wikipedia, and they can find the tools and support they need to organize in their regions. Deborah Krieger, the Exhibit & Program Coordinator for the Museum of Work & Culture in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, has already hosted an edit-a-thon, where she and fellow participants helped improve articles related to five women featured in the museum’s recent exhibit, Rhode Island Women Create. Another participant said, “I learned exactly what I came in to do and can use these tools for additional programming!”

2) The public benefits from untold stories about American women

With its wide availability, Wikipedia presents a unique chance to democratize knowledge about notable figures in U.S. history. But who traditionally determines what’s ‘notable’? Both the volunteer editors and the publications available to them, since Wikipedia biographies require citations from reputable sources. The community of editors in the United States typically cluster geographically in major cities like New York, Washington, DC, and San Francisco. Those active editors have built strong initiatives in their localities, running editing events, responding to local interest in Wikimedia projects, and fostering fun and fulfilling communities that keep editors engaged for years.

Thanks to those organizers, we’ve seen an influx of new editors in these regions over the last two decades. They excel at writing local legends into Wikipedia, making their stories more widely known. So how do we shed light on the hidden figures from other parts of the country?

Wiki Education has been eager to activate editors outside of the major clusters who can build Wikipedia outreach into their professional lives. This project with the Smithsonian presented a great opportunity to bring together Wikipedia novices from across the United States, working with people from Rhode Island, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, and 21 other states.

By bringing editors from diverse regions to Wikipedia, we are able to tell the story of American history beyond the names we know from our history books, especially when these editors have access to hyper-local archives and materials. Museum professionals identified the untold stories from their institutions’ own collections and brought them to a broader audience than the visitors who walk through their doors. As one participant, Freya Liggett, of the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington, said, “Projects like the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative can make significant contributions to Wikipedia’s content and open new ways for people to connect with resources at your museum.”

Freya developed a new biography for Wikipedia, writing about Estelle Reel. The suffragist and politician served as the national Superintendent of Indian Schools between 1898 and 1910. After the “many news stories [in 2021] about the grim legacy of North American Indian boarding schools,” Liggett thought it was important to add Reel’s role in the history of Indian schools, thus documenting the “individuals behind America’s assimilation-based education policies and the effects on Native children.” Though Reel’s role in developing racist curriculum to assimilate Indian children into white society is not a pretty one, these stories deserve to be accessible to the public, especially to honor Indian culture and history.

Erica Schumann, a member of the Development Team at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, created an article about Opal Lee, widely known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth.” Erica says she was shocked Opal Lee didn’t have an article, despite the considerable amount of national media attention she’d gotten. The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History had been working with Lee’s family to develop an exhibit display recognizing her for her achievements. So Erica dove right in to create her biography in her sandbox, a private drafting space on Wikipedia. While Erica’s draft was still in her sandbox, another editor created the article; Erica ended up moving her drafted text into the article others had started. “When I started sandboxing the article, I had no idea Juneteenth would become a federal holiday just a couple weeks later!” she said. “In the middle of the course, on June 17, 2021, Opal Lee saw her dream become a reality as she joined President Biden as he signed the bill formally establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday. This led to Ms. Lee gaining a significant amount of national and international attention over the course of just a few days, and it was incredible to see all the views the article was immediately getting! It was fantastic to see the article being updated in real time to reflect Ms. Lee’s huge accomplishment, and I am so grateful I got to be a part of that editing experience.” In only six months, Opal Lee’s biography has reached more than 20,000 readers, bringing one Texan’s story to a huge audience thanks to Wikipedia and editors like Schumann.

In 2021, a Wikipedia editor approached the Hagley Museum and Library with a rights and reproductions request: could they have images of the patent models Hagley had in their collection for inventor William E. Sawyer? Hagley Registrar Jennifer Johns immediately saw Wikipedia as another way to generate interest in their collection. As a part of the Wiki Scholars course, Jennifer expanded biographies of four notable women: Frances Gabe, Harriet Tracy, Clarissa Britain, and Anne Marguerite Hyde de Neuville. All are subjects of Hagley’s collection; the first three are inventors and the fourth is an artist in the collection whose work Jennifer likes. Because Jennifer had access to the museum’s collections, she was able to use photographs she’d taken of the patent models. Hagley is opening a new patent model exhibit, Nation of Inventors, in spring 2022, and Jennifer has made it her mission to ensure all the represented have Wikipedia biographies. After that, she says, she’ll tackle a larger project: ensuring all women inventors in Hagley’s collection have Wikipedia articles.

Above, you can see the quantitative impact this group has had over the past year. Their hard work (adding 81,000 words!!) has reached nearly 3 million people in less than a year. Now, anyone with access to the internet can learn about Anne Burlak, a labor organizer from Pennsylvania who helped shape labor standards for textile unions. Perhaps they’ll read about Cornelia Clarke, a nature photographer from Grinnell, Iowa, or Minnie M. Cox, the first Black postmaster in Mississippi.

3) We brought unique perspectives to Wikipedia

This project had another unintended impact on Wikipedia: 86% of the Wiki Scholars use “She/Her” pronouns.

You’ve probably heard of the Wikipedia gender gap — that far more people who identify as men edit Wikipedia than those who identify as women or different gender identities. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other projects, releases periodic “Community Insights” reports, which include demographic data on Wikipedia’s editing community. The 2021 Community Insights report shows the progress that’s been made on that front recently: Globally, women made up 15% of contributors, but in Northern America, where Wiki Education’s programs operate, that number is 22%. In contrast, self-reported survey data from across Wiki Education’s programs show that 67% of our program participants identify as women. The Smithsonian collaboration had an even higher percentage of participants who use “She/Her” pronouns: 86%!

Wiki Education has shown time and time again that providing a space for structured learning and discussion — like the weekly Zoom classes — helps new Wikipedia editors tackle the work it takes to write high-quality Wikipedia articles, especially for the first time. On this International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating that we’ve created a supportive learning environment that brings more diversity to the projects. As one Smithsonian Wiki Scholar put it, “REPRESENTATION MATTERS. Our course was focused on populating Wikipedia with notable women. The benefit is that now at least 50 or so new articles will be online for women who otherwise would have no online presence. That matters.” That matters for representation in Wikipedia’s content, and it matters for representation among the editors.

How other institutions can celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month by developing a similar project

Our team works personally with organizations like the Smithsonian to set up Wikipedia training courses that align with their mission and bring untold stories to Wikipedia. We’re eager to continue this work, but we need your help. You can sponsor a course like this one for your team. This unique, fun professional development experience is fulfilling for scholars as they share knowledge with the world, and we can’t wait to bring more subject-matter experts into our community.

If you’re interested in beginning a conversation about buying out a customized course for members or staff of your organization, contact us at partner@wikiedu.org.

Photo credits: Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 371, Box 02, Folder: December 1975, Image No. 75-14850-05; Bain News Service, publisher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Baroness Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Hyde de Neuville, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

“So often, we hear that girls in science need more role models and inspiration. We’re asked, ‘Where are the women in science?’, as if we’re not already here.”

– Dr. Maryam Zaringhalam and Dr. Jess Wade, Nature

500 Women Wiki Scientists is a project between Wiki Education and 500 Women Scientists to increase visibility of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and Medicine (STEMM) through Wikipedia’s vast reach. Since May 2020, we’ve partnered to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of women and other historically excluded scientists. 500 Women Scientists has given 75 members—predominantly early career scientists—the opportunity to work with Wiki Education’s Wikipedia experts to learn how to join the Wikipedia community and ensure the encyclopedia reflects the most accurate and equitable representation of STEMM.

In three Wiki Scientists courses to date (with a fourth one starting this week), scientists affiliated with 500 Women Scientists have collaborated with each other and Wiki Education’s team to add and expand STEMM biographies on Wikipedia. Over 6 weeks, they’ve learned how to use Wikimedia projects as tools in their work to preserve and share knowledge with the public. By embedding Wikipedia know-how within their institution, 500 Women Scientists has developed a network of Wikipedians to continue this important work both through their own editing and through coordinating Wikipedia-editing events.

This is the story of how this group has become an integral part of the Wikipedia movement, and how other organizations can make that happen for their faculty, staff, or members.

There are two key components to this ongoing project:

1.  we expand public knowledge of notable scientists who have been historically excluded from the narrative;

2. scientists learn how to edit Wikipedia, later applying their learning outcomes to teach others.

1) The public benefits from more inclusive information about scientists

The US Department of Education says that women earn 57.4% of bachelor’s degrees and 62.6% of master’s degrees. But only 31% of degrees and certificates in STEMM fields go to women.

This gap has an uneasy, well-known counterpart on Wikipedia. Roughly 83.7% of the volunteers writing Wikipedia are men. It’s perhaps no coincidence that Wikipedia’s biographies of women are often lacking in quality (sometimes highlighting a woman’s work through her husband’s career), and some are missing altogether, as only 19% of biographies on Wikipedia are of women. Wiki Education and 500 Women Scientists celebrate the idea that access to knowledge is a game-changer. We believe the same holds true for young future scientists. The gap in Wikipedia’s coverage of women reflects worrisome stereotypes of women in science, especially when we know that women already “do groundbreaking work and pave the way for more like them to join the ranks of the scientific workforce,” as Dr. Maryam Zaringhalam of 500 Women Scientists puts it.

That’s where the 500 Women Wiki Scientists come in. The participants in our courses have added more than 373,000 words to Wikipedia, primarily to biographies, and they’ve created 92 brand new articles. This is a feat for any group, but especially first-time editors who are new to Wikipedia’s technical and procedural nuances. They’re able to do this work because the publications about these scientists’ work already exist—notice they’ve added 1,400 references—but nobody else has taken the initiative to add it in to Wikipedia.

Participants’ hard work has reached over 7 million people curious to learn more about these scientists. Now, anyone with access to the internet can learn about Jean Langenheim, a plant ecologist and pioneer for women in the field. Perhaps they’ll read about Angela Christiano, a molecular geneticist whose research shows promise for treating hair loss, or Mercedes Concepcion, a Filipino social scientist whose outstanding work in population studies in Asia has earned her the nickname “Mother of Asian Demography.”

Thanks to the 500 Women Wiki Scientists, there are dozens of other stories like this now waiting for the world to discover them. We’re excited to continue this partnership, sharing stories that better represent the existing diversity among scientists, especially to encourage even more diversity in the coming generations. As Dr. Maryam Zaringhalam and Dr. Jess Wade have said, “If we can inspire enough editors to take to Wikipedia and fill in the gaps forged by gender bias, we will improve our scientific record, celebrate the outstanding science done by scientists from underrepresented groups and, maybe, inspire a new generation of girls in science who can find stories of girls just like them who grew up to do and discover incredible things.”

2) Wiki Scientists courses teach scientists how to edit Wikipedia, and alumni pass their new skills to other newcomers

Over 6 weeks, Wiki Education’s team of Wikipedia experts facilitates collaborative group sessions among 500 Women Scientists’ members to immerse them in Wikipedia’s technical, procedural, and cultural practices. Wiki Education helps these scholars incorporate published information about notable and underrepresented scientists from their field of study to Wikipedia.

Upon course completion, participants receive a shareable, electronic certificate issued by 500 Women Scientists and Wiki Education, designating them as 500 Women Wiki Scientists. At this stage, they have developed the technical skills and Wikipedia know-how to disseminate their knowledge to the public and facilitate Wikipedia-editing activities among their peers.

We’re proud of our Wiki Scientists course curriculum and the ability to bring “newbies” into the community in a relatively short period, and we’re especially thrilled with how much participants enjoy the whole experience. One participant said, “I was hoping to create two new Wikipedia pages – which was a huge stretch for me, since I had very limited editing experience before this program. I ended up creating three pages and participated in two additional edit-a-thons during the program. I plan on continuing to edit and make contributions. The course set me up to succeed.” When asked how they would describe the benefit of learning how to edit Wikipedia to someone else, another participant said, “Having the tools to contribute and improve one of the most visited sources of information is pretty empowering. Especially if you have a niche you’re excited to work on/learn more about. Editing Wikipedia is also a good exercise to become a better writer.”

And, of course, we love seeing that all post-course survey respondents reported satisfaction and that they would recommend this course to a colleague.

To date, we have trained 55 members of 500 Women Scientists how to edit Wikipedia, and we’re starting a new course this week, which will bring 20 new scientists into the community. The new cohort will join their peers in moderating virtual events to bring more scientists to Wikipedia. Check out their ongoing impact as they train others how to add biographies of historically excluded scientists to Wikipedia.

How organizations can partner with Wiki Education around a training course

Amplify reliable information to the public

Our team works personally with organizations like 500 Women Scientists to set up Wikipedia and Wikidata training courses that align with their mission and expand the public’s access to high quality knowledge. In conversations with one of 500 Women Scientists’ executive leaders, Dr. Maryam Zaringhalam, we identified what Wiki Education could help their members achieve, and we built the first course to ensure it would be an excellent learning experience for 500 Women Scientists’ participating members and would contribute to the public scholarship about women in STEMM.

Give your team the skills they need to train others

500 Women Scientists has been active for a few years in running Wikipedia edit-a-thons, events where trained Wikipedia editors guide interested newcomers through the early stages of contributing content to Wikipedia. Though they originally held events in regional “pods,” the COVID-19 pandemic shifted their events into a virtual space. These events proved engaging for members and have long had a high turn-out, but we determined that a more in-depth Wiki Scientists course would provide a deeper learning experience for anyone who prefers structured assignments and milestones as a part of their learning process. That way, 500 Women Scientists could expand their pool of members who were competent in Wikipedia editing and confident enough to train others, thus passing on their new skills to other members.

Help make open knowledge more inclusive and equitable

500 Women Scientists’ mission to make science more inclusive aligns with Wiki Education’s initiative to make Wikipedia more equitable. Not only do their members bring more inclusive content about scientists to the public through Wikipedia, but they represent a much more diverse group of editors than the existing community on English Wikipedia.

98% of the 500 Women Wiki Scientists alumni report their pronouns as “she/her” or “they/them,” which means this partnership is bringing more diverse voices to Wikipedia, as the existing editor base is 83.7% men. Additionally, we can compare the reported race and ethnicity of Wiki Education’s participants in the 500 Women Wiki Scientists courses to the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2021 Community Insights Report and see how much more racially diverse the 500 Women Wiki Scientists are compared to the existing Wikipedia community within the United States.

Join our movement!

Together, 500 Women Scientists and Wiki Education are working together to improve Wikipedia’s breadth, quality, and equity. We’re eager to continue this work, both with 500 Women Scientists and other partners. 500 Women Scientists has sponsored 75 seats since May 2020, creating a free, engaging learning opportunity for their members. This unique, fun professional development experience is fulfilling for scholars as they share knowledge with the world, and we can’t wait to bring more subject-matter experts into our community.

If you’re interested in beginning a conversation about buying out a customized course for members or staff of your organization, contact us at partner@wikiedu.org.

For the last two months, Wiki Education, in collaboration with our partners at ReThink Media, has been addressing content gaps within Wikipedia’s articles related to September 11, the War on Terror, and related topics. We’ve been leading a ReThink Media Wiki Scholars course, where we brought together a group of peace and security studies experts to identify content gaps in Wikipedia’s coverage. We taught them to edit Wikipedia and navigate policy, something that’s especially important when working in an area where strong feelings persist.

One of Wikipedia’s most active WikiProjects, or collectives of editors tackling a particular topic area, is WikiProject Military History. Articles related to the military often have extensive coverage of the specifics of war — but this approach has led to gaps in the context of humanitarian implications. During the course, we had several conversations about whether Wikipedia articles should include this kind of information, or whether the goal was to primarily provide accounts of campaigns and operations. We came to the consensus that Wikipedia’s goal is to provide an overview of all relevant information, which necessarily includes the humanitarian impacts of war. As a result of this, the participants updated information in the article on the War on terror, including adding a previously absent section on civilian casualties in various countries and war zones.

Other articles improved by the group include the September 11 attacks article, in which a contributor added subsections to the “domestic response” section about discrimination and racial profiling of Arab Americans and interfaith efforts to educate people about the Muslim faith. Another tackled the Post-9/11 article, adding a section about discriminatory backlash. And the Islamophobia in the United States article now has a section on Islamophobia in places of worship, thanks to a participant in the course.

A previously short article about Holy Shrine Defenders got an overhaul from another participant, resulting in a significant expansion. And information related to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and the United States v. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed case also saw significant edits from course participants. One Wiki Scholar updated and rewrote the Guantanamo military commission article, finally allowing the removal of that 11-year-old warning banner.

But sometimes smaller changes can have a big impact. In the lead section of the September 11 attacks article, al Qaeda is described as “Wahhabi”. One participant removed that term because it was inaccurate. Their edit was reverted by a Wikipedian because the statement was sourced, and the discussion on the article’s talk page didn’t come to a resolution. In our class session, the Wiki Scholar asked how best to proceed. Looking at the sources, it was fairly obvious that two were weak, but one came from an academic source, which meant it wasn’t the sort of thing that could be dismissed out of hand. But then a course participant who had the book on their own bookshelf referenced the cited page and found the relevant quote: Because Osama bin Laden and most of the hijackers are Saudi nationals, it was assumed that al-Qaeda is an expression of Wahhabism. That is not the case. Once the precise quote was supplied, the editors engaging on the talk page were able to reach consensus quickly.

Real world events overtook our course as people had to miss sessions to do press interviews after the Fall of Kabul, and many of them were personally impacted as they worried about the safety of colleagues and friends who were trying to escape Afghanistan. But despite that, they continued to work to improve Wikipedia, understanding that improvements like these were critical in the weeks leading up to the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, when readership of these articles is skyrocketing. In a few short weeks, the articles our subject-matter experts improved have received more than 1.4 million page views – and we expect that number to rise even more tomorrow and in the coming weeks. That means millions of people searching for neutral, fact-based information around this anniversary now get a more nuanced picture of the impacts the attacks have had over the past 20 years.

For as Slate’s Stephen Harrison writes, “As we approach the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11, Facebook users are likely to see 9/11 tributes selected by an algorithmic assessment of that user’s content preferences, part of the personalized, polarized social media experience. On the other hand, every English Wikipedia user who visits the current page for the September 11 attacks this week will see the same article regardless of their demographic profile.”

Interested in partnering with Wiki Education to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of a subject area? Visit partner.wikiedu.org. Image credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Quagliano first heard about Wiki Education through an email from the Association for Psychological Science’s (APS) Campus Representatives program. His volunteer work with APS afforded him the opportunity to participate in Wiki Education’s Black History Wiki Scholars course, where he explored his interest in editing Wikipedia. 

“I have always had an interest in learning how to responsibly edit on Wikipedia and contribute to the open knowledge on there. Additionally, I am aware that Black psychologists (especially women) are very poorly represented on Wikipedia, and I want to positively contribute to change, even if in a small way,” Quagliano said. 

While taking the course, Quagliano focused most of his editing on the Wikipedia article for Dr. Hope Landrine, a Black psychologist and professor. 

“I figured a small way to honor her legacy would be to explore her life and record her accomplishments and career on Wikipedia. Not only was she a psychologist, but an activist in her community and a continuous member in numerous organizations,” Quagliano says. 

Quagliano’s Wikipedia experience was underpinned by his desire to promote fair representation on the platform. He views his work editing Dr. Landrine’s article as a small, yet significant, contribution. 

“Though my contribution is small relative to the vast articles on Wikipedia, I hope that this article will help inform future people who are curious about Dr. Landrine. Also, I think it is just one small step in making sure Black individuals and culture are better represented on Wikipedia in the future,” Quagliano says. 

Considering the broader significance of his contributions to Wikipedia, Quagliano encourages others to learn how to edit Wikipedia as well. 

“Wikipedia promotes knowledge for the sake of learning, not for money or incentives. In a sense, by contributing positively to the articles on Wikipedia, we can teach others about all sorts of things, from all subject areas,” Quagliano says. 

With a variety of course options centered around specific research interests, representation, and visibility, Wiki Education convenes Wiki Scholars across disciplines to engage in a collaborative open-knowledge effort. 

Quagliano’s course experience was critical in helping him learn the editing process to refine his contributions to Wikipedia. 

“We were taught how to consider different evidence and how to determine whether certain people or things were significant enough to be on Wikipedia, and we were also educated on the numerous ways to write a cohesive and meaningful article,” Quagliano. 

To take a course like the one Quinton took, visit learn.wikiedu.org.

Image of Quinton Credit: Quinton.Quagliano, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Hero Image Credit: 칼빈500, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

At first glance that seems surprising: Surely almost everyone has made up their minds about whether they support Donald Trump or Joe Biden? While the sliver of voters who are still undecided about the presidential elections is small, there’s more to the US election than just the presidency. This year, 35 seats in the US Senate and all 435 seats in the US House are up for election. In addition, state legislatures, state ballot initiatives, and a host of other races (including school board members and county drain commissioners in some states) are up for elections.

Coverage of state-level elections is spotty on Wikipedia. The coverage of some states in some years is excellent, but most lack even the most basic set of information about the election. Like everything else, the articles that get written are those catch the interest of Wikipedia’s volunteer editor base. In August, to try to get better information relevant to voters in the 2020 elections, we ran our Informing Citizens Wiki Scholars class.

Several participants in the course focused on state-level election pages. New articles were created about the 2020 Tennessee Elections and 2020 Kansas Elections, while a new article about the 2020 Colorado Elections was created jointly by a class participant and another Wikipedian (in the serendipitous way that collaborations sometimes work on Wikipedia). Other people focused on specific issues, like improving the Oakland Unified School District or the 2020 California Proposition 14 article. Given the relevance of climate change to voters decisions, another participant decided to improve the volcanic gas article to make it clear that the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes is small compared to anthropogenic emissions.

Courses like these are important ways to encourage subject matter experts to contribute their research skills and knowledge to Wikipedia, ahead of when these pages will be most important as voters seek neutral, fact-based information. To see a current list of course offerings, visit learn.wikiedu.org.

Sadly, however, that’s not every region of the country. That’s why Wiki Education launched a series of courses in our Wiki Scholars program devoted to improving the quality of content on articles related to state and regional responses to COVID-19. To date, we’ve wrapped up two courses, have a third ongoing, and are actively recruiting for more. Course fees for these courses have been paid by a generous sponsor who is supporting the improvement of COVID-19-related articles on Wikipedia.

The two courses that have wrapped up demonstrate the benefits of the Wiki Scholars model. Wiki Education staff recruits experts in public policy, political science, journalism, and other related topic areas to take a 6-week course where we teach the participants how to edit Wikipedia articles related to the pandemic. In our first two courses, 36 subject matter experts have added content to articles that have been viewed millions of times.

Many of the participants improved the “timeline” sections of state articles, adding the daily and weekly updates, and most also improved other sections in articles. One participant wrote a large section in Maine’s article on the impact to higher education in the state. The Arizona article has a section on epidemiology and public health responses written nearly entirely by a participant in one of our courses. The South Carolina article now has a section on the epidemiology and public health response, as well as impacts to K-12 and higher education schools and the economy.

Our courses also offered an opportunity for participants to address Wikipedia’s equity gaps in this content area. One participant added a section on the pandemic’s impact on the Northern Arapaho tribe to the Wyoming article. Another noted the Navajo Nation, which at the time had a higher per capita positive rate than any U.S. state, didn’t have an article about COVID-19, so our participants created one. Another participant added a section about New Mexico’s Navajo Nation to the New Mexico article.

A participant from our course wrote most of the article about North Dakota’s response, but once they finished the course, the article edits stopped as well. These courses have demonstrated that it takes more than just an individual or even a group of individuals to keep these articles up to date. Articles like this desperately need regular edits; that’s why we’re offering more courses. The work our past participants have done has demonstrated the value of these improvements; now, we need to do more.

If you’re interested in learning how to improve Wikipedia’s articles related to COVID-19, we are actively accepting applicants for our next course.

Header/thumbnail image of COVID-19 testing in Arizona by User:Prim8acs, a participant in one of our courses, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 

“I started to see each Wikipedia page as less of a monolith and more as a creative, patchwork monster that perhaps hundreds of people were working on.”

In an inter-institutional training course with the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (referred to henceforth as “the Alliance”), librarians have had the opportunity to collaborate closely with peers across the state. Over 12 weeks, they’ve learned how to use Wikimedia projects as tools in their work to preserve and share knowledge with the public. By embedding Wikipedia know-how within their institutions, these Wiki Scholars can enrich their educational and preservation efforts long after the course ends.

This is the story of how and why this group joined the Wikipedia movement, and how other organizations can make that happen for their faculty, staff, or members.

Why did librarians join a Wikipedia “how-to” course?

Melissa Huang is an Information Services & Reference Librarian at Western Colorado University and participated in the course after being asked to join by her supervisor. “I readily accepted because I wanted to get more insights into Wikipedia,” Melissa shared. “As a librarian, I had already used it as an information literacy exercise with students.” Learning more about the behind-the-scenes world of the site would help for future curricula, as well as satisfy a personal curiosity about how the site’s information lives and breathes.

Like most of us, Melissa had had plenty of experience using Wikipedia as a jumping off point in her own research or to answer a quick question. “But it was really as a graduate student that I started to see a lot of the cracks.”

So often, subject-matter experts can quickly spot something in a Wikipedia page that needs correction, but they either don’t make the change, or it doesn’t stick when they do. Our courses equip them with the Wikipedia know-how to contribute their valuable perspective to these pages.

Understanding the back end of knowledge production on the site prepares professionals to pass on digital literacy skills to students. Instead of discouraging the use of Wikipedia altogether, instructors increasingly find it’s more impactful to equip students with the analytical skills to make sense of what they find there.

“My perspective changed a great deal throughout the course,” Melissa shared. “I started to see each Wikipedia page as less of a monolith and more as a creative, patchwork monster that perhaps hundreds of people were working on, and that these were all works-in-progress. Maybe the biggest change was in seeing the discussions behind each topic and the fullness of the community responsible for those changes. It seems silly now, but I hadn’t really considered the fact that Wikipedia is really a community of people, and as with any large group of people, there are different factions and conflicting beliefs on the ‘right’ way to go about anything.”

What did the course look like?

Scholars & Scientists Program Manager Ryan McGrady and Senior Wikipedia Expert Ian Ramjohn met with the cohort of Alliance members once a week for 12 weeks. In these virtual, synchronous sessions, Ryan and Ian demystified the inner-workings of Wikipedia, created space for these newcomers to make successful contributions, and helped answer any questions that arose throughout the process. They led discussions on the philosophy of an open community producing knowledge, what content gaps that inevitably leaves, and why it can be so difficult as a newcomer to enter that space.

In general, our courses prepare experts from a wide variety of fields to contribute content to the most-read Wikipedia pages relevant to their area of study. These personalized courses have plenty of space to help participants think beyond the course, too. Some incorporate what they’ve learned into curricula, taking advantage of the free resources for a Wikipedia writing assignment that we offer through our Student Program. The assignment is a great opportunity for students to engage with (and help create!) open educational resources. Other course alumni present at conferences about the power of this public scholarship. And still others may develop research related to the online encyclopedia. Whatever the goals of our participants, we can help.

What it means to partner with Wiki Education around a training course

Our Director of Partnerships Jami Mathewson works personally with organizations like the Alliance to set up Wikipedia training courses that align with their mission. In conversations with the Alliance’s Executive Director, George Machovec, as well as Dustin Fife of Western Colorado University, Jami identified what Wiki Education could help their members achieve and worked with other Wiki Education staff to build the course and ensure it would be an excellent learning experience for the Alliance’s participating members.

“The Alliance’s members are research libraries, and their faculty are often interested in running Wikipedia-related events or supporting Wikipedia assignments in the classroom,” Jami shared. “We decided to run this Wiki Scholars course to train librarians who would build their new skills and Wikipedia expertise into their professional roles within the libraries.”

The Alliance’s interest in collaboration and open access, as well as its commitment to helping member libraries “stay ahead in the rapidly changing world of information management” made a Wikipedia training course an attractive fit for its members. Involvement in Wikipedia presents an interesting opportunity to fulfill these goals. The site is an important player in the modern information landscape. So when libraries participate in its inner-workings, they position themselves within evolving discussions around information access in the 21st century.

“After working with these faculty for 3 months, we’re thrilled to see the excellent work they have done on Wikipedia, and we look forward to learning more about how their skills benefit their professional lives,” Jami shared.

Course successes

Participating librarians noted in a post-course survey that one of the biggest benefits of the online sessions was the opportunity to hear from and collaborate with other teachers and with our Wikipedia expert staff. This positive course outcome speaks to the Alliance’s belief* (and Wikipedia’s self-stated purpose) that information leaders can multiply their influence and better the world by working collaboratively.

Not only did participants benefit each other by working together, but they did some great work on Wikipedia itself! Among many pages that the Alliance Wiki Scholars worked on, they:

• added information about the history and development of web archiving to its page (which has been viewed 11,460 times since);
• added the definition of a research question to its page, as well as the process for constructing one (which has been viewed 28,966 times since);
• and expanded the philosophy section of the Black Girl Magic movement page and added information about its appearance in popular culture (11,766 views since).

“I had a great time and felt I learned a lot in this course,” Melissa shared. “It was really interesting to get into the weeds of what kind of editing you can or should do, the etiquette involved with corrections, and so on.”

What comes next?

“I would like to continue editing articles and adding to my areas of interest,” said Melissa. “And I definitely think that I will be able to use the information gathered in this course in my own instruction sessions about Wikipedia.”

As a Teaching and Learning Librarian put it in their post-course survey, “The experience was significant to me in a number of ways: as a teacher, it gave me the opportunity to imagine the experience of a learner working with Wikipedia. As a scholar, it gave me the opportunity to author in a different voice and for a broader audience. As a digital citizen committed to the commons, it gave me the opportunity to be active in tangible ways and to take advantage of my information privilege.”

This project is sponsored by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, especially with the hard work of George Machovec and Dustin Fife. The Alliance has sponsored 12 seats since June 2019. Participation for accepted members is free. If you’re interested in buying out a customized professional development course for members or staff of your organization or institution, contact Director of Partnerships at partner@wikiedu.org.