Welcome to the WikiOlympics Edit-a-Thon! Have you been following the Olympics this summer? This exciting event is your opportunity to help improve and expand the coverage of the Olympics on Wikipedia.
Our primary goals are to close the gender gap in Wikipedia content and to update the Irish language Wikipedia, ensuring a more comprehensive and inclusive representation of all athletes and events.
Women athletes and their remarkable achievements are often underrepresented in media and online platforms. By participating in this edit-a-thon, you will help address this imbalance by creating and expanding articles about female Olympians, highlighting their contributions, and inspiring future generations. Your efforts will bring deserved recognition to these athletes and contribute to a more equitable portrayal of sports history.
Additionally, we are committed to enriching the Irish language Wikipedia. This initiative supports the preservation and promotion of the Irish language, providing valuable resources to native speakers and learners alike. Updating and expanding the Irish language Wikipedia with Olympic content ensures that this vibrant part of our cultural heritage remains relevant and accessible.
Together, we can make a significant impact by closing the gender gap and promoting linguistic diversity. Join us in the WikiOlympics Edit-a-Thon and be part of a global movement for inclusivity and knowledge sharing. Let’s celebrate the Olympics and the athletes who make it extraordinary, in every language and for every audience! Click the link below to get started, you can join the edit-a-thon until September 25th 2024. Please find more resources at the end of this page.
Join the Edit-a-thon here!
Why do we need to start writing about Women on Wikipedia?
In 2022 research found there were more Wikipedia entries about football and footballers than about women!
Of the nearly 1.9 million biographies of notable individuals on English-language Wikipedia – from authors to scientists, celebrities and academics, politicians and sportspeople – a mere 19 per cent are women. This mirrors unequal representation more generally.
As well as considering the amount of women missing from Wikipedia, we also need to think about where women are being represented on Wikipedia. When biographical articles are grouped by profession, there is a selection that contains more about women than men, but the list is telling. The top 25 categories where this is the case include nun, women’s rights activist, sex worker, erotic model, royal consort and homemaker.
A visual representation of the categories of articles written about women on Wikipedia
Wikipedia and information shared online and in the media reflect and inform our society. It is both a symptom of inequality in society and risks becoming a cause, exacerbating existing biases.
Wikipedia also offers us the opportunity to empower ourselves by becoming editors. We can help fill the gaps and have a say in whose stories get told.
Redressing the balance on Wikipedia is one step towards equality, social justice and acknowledgement of women’s power.
Resources:
- Wikipedia:Notability (sports): This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. The article should provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline. A person is presumed to be notable if they have been the subject of significant coverage, that is, multiple published, non-trivial, secondary sources which are reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject.
- Wikipedia:Notability (sports)/FAQ: Frequently asked questions about notability and sports.
How to Participate:
1) If you don’t already, create a Wikipedia account and log in.
2) Assign yourself an article from the list of suggested articles or if you want to create a new article you can assign that to yourself either!
3) Create your draft article in your sandbox (your own space on Wikipedia to practice editing) or make the changes to the article that already exists!
4) Publish your changes.
5) Share your edits on social media to celebrate your addition to the online encyclopedia for science week!
6) Invite a friend to join the Editathon!
If you need more information or guidance about editing Wikipedia pages, feel free to reach out for help! Contact info@wikimedia.ie
Remember small edits make a difference!
If you are stuck for time you don’t have to write a whole new article for your work to be meaningful. You can:
- Fix a typo
- Make minor edits or add information to pre-existing articles
- Add or update citations
- Translation
- Add category tags to make articles more discoverable
- Add public domain images to articles or WikiCommons
- Add your own photos to Wikicommons. Find a how to guide here.
Interested in helping to fill the gender gap on Wikipedia? Find out more about our WikiWomen Project.
