Wikipedia:Meetup/justfortherecord/Events/chantingrecording3

Logo for the project Just For The Record – addressing how gender is represented in new media and writing/publishing tools like Wikipedia, and what influence this has on the way history is recorded.

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20.12.2017
Chanting and Recording part 3

Just for the Record is happy to organize an edit-a-thon in the context of Beursschouwburg's extensive program titled The Future is Feminist. We will be doing three participative work-sessions with the help of guest speakers and performers where we will look into chants, alternative history sources and ways to decolonise views on source credibility. Wikipedia will be used to varying degrees in these events, depending on the guest and the subject at hand. We invite you to enjoy a mix of input and output, addressing oral history and its importance as a narrative and collective practice. Feminist chants and slogans will guide us in the editing of Wikipedia pages, to add missing narratives to the polyphonic collaborative encyclopedia.

Pictures of the event

Practical Information

Venue: Beursschouwburg, 20-28 A. Orts street, Brussels
Date: 20.12.2017
Time: 6pm - 10pm
Language: Presentations in English
Cost: Free
Participants: Open to anyone interested in this experience: beginners welcome! beginners welkom! Experienced Wikipedia editors will be present and will share their knowledge in editing Wikipedia.
What to Bring: Attendees can bring their own laptops and power cords.

Enregistrez-vous ici ! / Sign Up Here!

Avez-vous déjà un compte Wikipedia? / Do you already have a Wikipedia account?
NON / NO : Créer un compte Create an account	OUI / YES : Inscrivez-vous en cliquant sur le bouton bleu Sign-up by clicking the button below To sign up for this event: Log in or create an account.

What can you do?

During the event, we invite you to contribute to Wikipedia and to the discussions around the gender gap on Wikipedia. You can edit an existing article to improve it, create a new one about a subject that doesn’t exist, but we also highly value the sharing of editing experiences, and ideas about what could make Wikipedia a more welcoming and colorful place!

Open questions:

Here are interrogations we would like to share with you:

if Wikipedia can be considered as a tool to re·write history, how would you like it to be written?
what is the influence the way we write on the representation of history and its main figures?
can writing ever be neutral?

First steps on wikipedia

Create an account
Add your user name to the participant list of this event at the bottom of this page or by clicking the "sign up" button above
Write some informations on your own wiki page by clicking on your user name at the top of the page. This will turn your link blue so that you wont look like a newbie.
Write some informations on your Sandbox, also at the top of the page
Improve an existing article
Create a new article

Ideas to start editing

Articles that need your help!

Here are lists identifying articles that could benefit from edits and expansion:

The Art+Feminism list of articles to be improved
Women Artists, by the Women in Red
A list by the project Women in Red
Women Artists from all over the world, a list by the Project Women Artists
Women scientists, a list by the Project Women Scientists
Women writers, a list by the Project Women Writers

Translations

These lists mostly link to English Wikipedia, don’t forget your own language’s Wikipedia!

Look for problematic language

Man as false generic: Ban the use of the words man, men and mankind to refer to a person or persons of unspecified sex or to persons of both sexes.

The page Writing about women offers great insights. Look for the following problems in existing pages and try to fix them:

Male is not the default: Avoid labelling a woman as a female (ex: author, politician etc.), unless her gender is explicitly relevant to the article. An opposite example is saying male nurse.
Use surnames: Look for articles using surnames for men, while calling women by their first name. See example
Infoboxes are an important source of metadata (see DBpedia) and a source of discrimination against women. For example, the word spouse is more likely to appear in a woman's infobox than in a man's.
This is a good and terrifying exercise, try to find a page (that is not) defining women by their relationships in the first paragraph.
One study found that women on Wikipedia are more linked to men than men are linked to women.
Use gender-neutral nouns when describing professions and positions
Try changing the order in which groups are introduced – man and woman, male and female, Mr. and Mrs., husband and wife, brother and sister
The use of the generic he (masculine pronouns such as he, him, his) is increasingly avoided in sentences that might refer to men and women.
Avoid problematic phrasing when talking about married people. See examples
Do not refer to adult women as girls or ladies!
Avoid images that objectify women!