Archive for the ‘Wikipedia’ Category

Search engine – Simple English Wikipedia, the free …

A search engine is a website that allows users to look up information on the World Wide Web (www). The search engine will achieve this by looking at many web pages to find matches to the user's search inputs. It will return results ranked by relevancy and popularity by the search engine. Some popular search-engines are Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, Forestle and Bing. Older services include Webcrawler, Lycos, and Alta Vista.

To use a search engine you must enter at least one keyword in to the search box. Usually an on-screen button must be clicked on to submit the search. The search engine looks for matches between the keyword(s) entered and its database of websites and words.

After the user inputs their search or query into the search bar, a list of results will appear on the screen known as search engine results page (SERP). This list of webpages contains matches related to the user's query in a particular order determined by a ranking system. Most search engine will remove "spam" pages from the list of results to provide a better list of results. The user can then click on any of the links to go to that webpage.

Search engines are some of the most advanced websites on the web. They use special computer code to sort the web pages on SERPs. The most popular or highest quality web pages will be near the top of the list.

When a user types words into the search engine, it looks for web pages with those words. There could be thousands, or even millions, of web pages with those words. So, the search engine helps users by putting the web pages it thinks the user wants first.

Search engines are very useful to find information about anything quickly and easily. Using more keywords or different keywords improves the results of searches.

A search service may also include a portal with news, games, and more information besides a search engine. Yahoo! has a popular portal, and MSN Search is part of the MSN portal, while Google has a simple design on its front page. Search services usually work without charging money for finding sites, and are often supported with text or banner advertisements.

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Search engine - Simple English Wikipedia, the free ...

Virtual Edit-a-Thon hosted by WVU libraries to improve Wikipedia articles – The Daily Athenaeum – thedaonline

WVU Libraries is hosting Amplifying Appalachia, a virtual Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon from March 1-5. The event is open to anyone who would like to participate.

Assistant English professor and co-organizer of the event Erin Brock Carlson said Edit-a-Thon is a community-organized event that aims to teach attendees how to edit, update and add articles on Wikipedia, with the hope that this would create like regular contributors and regular editors.

At the events kickoff Zoom meeting on March 1, Carlson and her co-organizer, Humanities Librarian Lynne Stahl, spoke about the astounding lack of diversity among current Wikipedia contributors.

Carlson cited a 2011 study conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation that found that less than 10% of Wikipedia contributors identify as (cisgender or transgender) women, and only about 17% of Wikipedias biographical articles are about women.

There's one really wonderful organization called Art + Feminism... founded in 2014, Carlson said during the Zoom meeting. It's this ongoing effort to really improve gender equity in Wikipedia's art-related content, because that's a space in which there is definitely a lack of representation.

WVUs Amplifying Appalachia Edit-a-Thon is supported by Art + Feminism, which has already contributed to improving more than 80,000 Wikipedia articles at the time of writing.

Previously, WVU has only held in-person Edit-a-Thons, but the Amplifying Appalachia'' planning committee was determined to overcome the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic in organizing this entirely virtual event.

The Edit-a-Thon will be continuing through the week until Friday, March 5, following an asynchronous format. According to Carlson, an asynchronous format might allow for more people to edit on their own time and at their own pace.

Participation is expected to exceed the planning committees goals, with 81 participants currently enrolled.

Weve [also] been working with 15 or so instructors who are incorporating the Edit-a-Thon into their courses this semester, which is exciting, Stahl added.

Carlson and Stahl also emphasized during the events kickoff Zoom meeting that although editing Wikipedia pages may seem like a daunting task, its actually quite simple once you get started.

Familiarizing yourself with [Wikipedias] major guidelines and policies is a good idea, Stahl said, and once youve done that, I think the best way [to get started] is just to jump in and make some edits. You can start smalladding links, sources and categories, for example, which helped me get over the intimidation factor.

The events organizers have put together a collection of resources that can be easily accessed through the event dashboard to help answer any questions new editors may have.

According to Carlson, the planning committee hopes that the Amplifying Appalachia Edit-a-Thon will help increase familiarity with Wikipedia across campus and encourage the amplification of stories, people and accomplishments of Appalachia, especially for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ community members and others who are often overlooked.

In addition, drop-in hours will be open to all from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. March 4-5 via Zoom, and a post-participation survey will be available for anyone who has participated in the event.

Since Wikipedia is a community-driven, crowd-sourced space for information, its up to us to make sure that it reflects the stories that ought to be told, Carlson said.

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Virtual Edit-a-Thon hosted by WVU libraries to improve Wikipedia articles - The Daily Athenaeum - thedaonline

Art + Feminism Lecture and Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon – The Hudson Reporter

Art + Feminism Lecture and Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon

Art + Feminism Lecture and Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon

In honor of Womens History Month, Art House Productions, along with Hudson County Community College & Seton Hall University, present Art+Feminism Lecture on Wednesday, March 24 at 12:30 p.m. via Zoom.

Click here to register for the lecture.

On April 7 from 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. the Walsh Library and the Walsh Gallery will host Seton Halls second Art+Feminism Wikipedia edit-a-thon. All are invited to register to become Wikipedians and edit or create a Wikipedia page for an artist.

Click here to register for the event.

According to the Art+Feminism website, the non-profit organization directly addresses the inequality of gender, feminism, and the arts on Wikipedia. This is accomplished through a coordinated campaign of online training materials and volunteer-organized edit-a-thons at a variety of cultural and intellectual institutions across the globe.

In the lecture on March 24, Brooke Duffy and Jeanne Brasile will provide an overview of the ways in which women and gender diverse artists have traditionally been and continue to be excluded from the art historical canon and global art markets. They will share background information about the Art+Feminism organization and objectives of their wiki-thons. The lecture culminates with a hands-on activity in which participants can engage with, critically read, and converse about artist Wikipedia pages.

To request closed captions or ASL interpreters, please email info@arthouseproductions.org at least 72 hours before the event.

The mission of the Hudson County Community College Department of Cultural Affairs is to provide supplementary programs to stimulate awareness of the arts and foster creativity. They strive to complement the efforts of HCCC with cultural events, community programs, and educational initiatives. The goal is to transcend the understanding of visual and performing arts by closing the distance between the experience of art and everyday life in the community we serve.

In 2015, the College established a Cultural Affairs Task Force comprising involved members of the community, as well as HCCC Trustees, Foundation Board Directors, educators and scholars. The result is a full calendar of arts programs and events each semester, most of which are free of cost, and are held on the Colleges Journal Square and North Hudson campuses.

Please click here to view this seasons offerings.

The Seton Hall University Libraries advance distinction in the Seton Hall communitys teaching, learning, and research through its provision of user-focused services, programs, and robust collections. Seton Hall University Libraries support excellence in academic and individual work, enable inquiry, foster intellectual and ethical integrity and respect for diverse points of view through user-focused services and robust collections as the intellectual and cultural heart of the University.

The University Libraries are central to the Universitys intellectual life where students and faculty needs are the top priority. We lead through the provision of innovative services, programs, and resources within the Seton Hall community and beyond. The Walsh Gallery and Archives and Special Collections are the repositories for records, art and artifacts in support of the University Libraries and Seton Hall Universitys missions, goals and visions. In the Catholic intellectual tradition, we encourage the exchange of divergent points of view as we are the intellectual, ethical, cultural, and historical heart of the University. http://www.shu.edu

Art House Productions has long awarded adventurous and diverse performing artists with a stage to expose audiences to their ambitious and challenging projects. Art House Productions is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to the development and presentation of the performing and visual arts in Jersey City, NJ. Art House Productions presents theater, performing and visual arts festivals, arts events, visual art exhibitions, and adult and youth art classes.

For more information about programs, please visit the website at http://www.arthouseproductions.org. Follow on social media @arthouseproductions @arthouseprods. To sign up for Art Houses mailing list, please click here.

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Art + Feminism Lecture and Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon - The Hudson Reporter

Africans Are Being Empowered to Write and Edit Wikipedia Articles About Their Own Countries and Culture – Good News Network

As the 10th most-visited website on Earth, and the largest repository of human knowledge there is, school curriculums and even entire worldviews can be formed simply through reading Wikipedia.

However, when the city of Paris has more information contained in Wikipedia than the entire African continent, there is a significant risk of young Africans beginning to perceive home as a single story.

Further, an enormous amount of content on Wikipedia about African culture, languages, geography, and more, is written by Westerners. The inevitable lack of cultural context inherent in the everyday experiences of Africans can lead to stereotypingagain turning one small part of the African story into the whole story.

The WikiAfrica Education Program, founded by the Moleskine Foundation, is an effort to foster creativity and an interest in culture in African school curriculums by teaching students how to prepare and submit, as well as edit, articles on Wikipedia.

Since 2006, the WikiAfrica Program has led students contributing 40,000 submissions, including articles, and also audio clips, edits, photos, and more. Notably, many of the most detailed of these submissions were in African languages like Xhosa.

Co-founder of the Moleskine Foundation, Adama Sanneh, an Italian-born son of a Gambian/Senegalese father, understands that creativity creates culture, and culture is the force that changes society.

A self-professed nerdy kid drawn to culture, art, and philosophy during his childhood growing up outside of Milan, he started the Moleskine Foundation in an effort to try and galvanize Africans into changing power dynamics on the internetand in their daily lives.

We aim to inspire young people from the continent and beyond, and especially African language speakers, to transform themselves from passive knowledge consumers to active knowledge producers, says Sanneh, who then explained the startling information gap between Paris and Africa.

When we look at entries in African languages the situation is even more grim. So obviously the idea is to do something about it, and with this cultural and bottom up approach the idea is to really inspire young people to become knowledge producers, to talk about their surroundings, to talk about their knowledge, and especially to do it in their languages, he toldGNN.

Disenchanted by the traditional NGO-approach to development and aid in Africa, which made Sanneh feel he was on the wrong side of history, his work with Moleskine embodies the widely-held belief that African problems must be addressed by Africans, and that African history should be written forAfricans.

Theres so much misunderstanding around the African continent, says Sanneh.

In 2019, Moleskine Foundation teamed up with the Constitution Hill Trust in Johannesburg to put on a Wikipedia edit-a-thon called AfroCuration, wherefollowing a presentation on the history of the constitution of South AfricaSanneh and his team had 200 computers waiting for the students.

We had more than 300 young people coming together at Constitution Hill in the museum, so it was really inspiring and full of history, he said. They could chose among 100 different entries of heroes, various aspects of the Constitution, and then write those articles in their own languages, meaning isiZulu, Xhosa, Zenda, etc. They wrote more than 200 entries, in one day, on Wikipedia.

The great thing was that those entries, whether about Winnie Mandela (Nelsons second wife), or about specific moments in South African history, that were missing in their own language in the following month, those entries were seen collectively more than 250,000 times.

In another AfroCuration event, also at Constitution Hill, but with the AfroPunk Army Initiative, 12 Black, female South African historical figures essentially returned to the historical recordwith their names and deeds finally making it onto the internet.

Now you can find an article about Joy Seroke, whos a super-important figure in South African history in the fight against apartheid, and whos never mentioned, says Sanneh. Now you can find it on Wiki in isiZulu, Xhosa, Zenda.

The importance of the African languages to the WikiAfrica Education Program cannot be understated, because a culture cant fully express itself without its language. For example, Chinese Confucian theology would never be complete without Chinese words.

This was never more important than after the pandemic arrived, when virtually no information, guidelines, or policies were being translated into African languages. Sanneh saw a need, as well as an opportunity.

MORE: $14 Billion Raised For Great Green Wall to Continue Planting Trees Across Africa, Keeping Sahara From Destroying Villages

When we started the situation was very grim, there was only one article in Luba, or something like that, he told GNN. We launched a campaign to ask people to translate ten articles around COVID-19 that would allow the sparking of creative solutions.

In a couple of months we passed from one to more than 300 articles in more than 20 different African languages. That gave access to more than 300 million people when we look at the composition of the languages, he said.

RELATED: Weve Made Massive Progress Educating Girls Around the World in the Last 25 Years, Says Report

With the WikiAfrica Education Programn now working with schools across the continent to get Wikipedia skills into school curriculums, Sanneh has time to turn his attention to other projects.

Host of the Creativity Pioneers Podcast, which looks at how creativity can spark social change, not just in Africa, but all over the world, Sanneh interviews creatives, social activists, and morepeople like Uzodinma Iweala, the Nigerian-American novelist who wrote the bestselling novel Beasts of No Nation.

CHECK OUT: Nigerian Entrepreneur Invents Giant Solar-Powered Refrigerators That Cut Spoilage to Help Farmers Earn 25% More

You can find new episodes every Thursday, and get to know the entrepreneurs, artists, activists, and scientists that make Africa, in Sannehs opinion, the most creative continent around.

Empower Your FriendsShare This Positive Trend With Them

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Africans Are Being Empowered to Write and Edit Wikipedia Articles About Their Own Countries and Culture - Good News Network

Most women journalists in history haven’t been ‘notable’ enough for Wikipedia. We’re changing that. – Poynter

Below is an excerpt from The Cohort, Poynters newsletter for women in media.Subscribe hereto get it in your inbox every two weeks.

At the beginning of 2021, I looked at my inbox and saw all the people who were not replying to my inquiries. I saw the applications I made and the recruiters who ghosted after filling their diversity quotas. I saw all the exhortations to training opportunities and fellowships, instead of capital investments and 401ks and health benefits.

And I tried to unravel those missing emails and trails to nowhere. What part of my network isnt strong enough? What opportunities did I not seize upon or not respond to correctly, or with enough confidence? Is there a typo in my resume?

It turns out, Ive spent much of my career pulling on all the wrong threads. The way women, and women of color in particular, are excluded from our industry is much more complicated than what is or isnt filling our inboxes.

Of course, I had plenty of riches in my inbox too. Not least of these are the powerful colleagues and leaders who support transformation in our industry, those who I consider my personal cohort. The last two years, with all their personal, professional and global disruptions, have been growing years for me. And now I have some seedlings poised to become great forests one day. Among them is the all-volunteer project Women Do News.

This exceptional group of volunteers has a simple mission: add more women journalists to Wikipedia. People of color are underrepresented and 90% of its contributors identify as male. The result is that on one of the most visited websites in the world arguably the most visited site that is not a search engine, social media or commerce less than 18% of English biographies are about women. The Wikipedia gender gap has been well documented and there are many groups doing essential work to make up for the sites biases. Following groups in other industries like Women in Red, Art + Feminism and Wikiproject Women Scientists has taught me a lot about how important journalism is in the way we understand the world.

The news industry functions like an economy in many ways. Our currency trust, reputation, belief in each others abilities is based on faith in the system which tells us who and what is valuable. Wikipedia is a magnification of that system and so, like in the real world, credit is disproportionately conferred onto men. That system of who gets to be credible, or in Wikipedias vocabulary, who gets to be notable, is at the heart of our work.

The lack of women journalists on Wikipedia is sometimes shocking. Among entries the Women Do News network has added so far are women who are pioneers for Asian Americans, who covered high-profile trials for 50 years, and who were the first women editors in their newsrooms. They have won Emmys and Murrows and Pulitzers but unlike men with similar credentials, they couldnt get that coveted prize of a Wikipedia page!

What is more shocking to me, though, is how many women journalists dont get interviewed, profiled or awarded, how many women journalists who have outsized impact on the world dont get obituaries when they pass. Through over a year of edit-a-thons, events and ongoing work, our network of about 300 people has nominated 224 journalists for entries so far. The work is slow; weve completed 28 new entries and improved 10. But many of these nominated women journalists who are clearly notable simply have not been written about or credited for their vital work well enough to support a Wikipedia entry.

Doing this work has exposed so much of how every small bias from having mostly male media critics to passing up a woman for a promotion gets magnified at the ecosystem level. What starts as discrimination, being given the wrong title or not included in a byline heck, even an ignored email or application bubbles up into systematic erasure of the contributions of many people. Social scientists call it symbolic annihilation, and the irony is that our own industrys lack of inclusion has helped drive so many of us out of the ubiquitous record that is Wikipedia.

Our aim is not just to get more women journalists onto Wikipedia; it is to get more women journalists into the magazine articles, business reviews, profiles and records of our lives. It is to get more women journalists into the history books. It is to get more women journalists that little Wikipedia box that comes with search results, that confers upon them an agreed sense of significance. It is to get more women journalists the currency they need to continue to transform our industry.

And that, I hope, will help make your inbox and mine look much more promising in the future.

Subscribe to The Cohortto access curated lists of mentors, get to know more about each columnist, and participate in an ongoing conversation amongst women in media, technology and news.

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Most women journalists in history haven't been 'notable' enough for Wikipedia. We're changing that. - Poynter