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afroCROWD Wikipedia Edit-a-thon photo by Lilith Dorsey. All rights reserved.

Last weekend I had the honor of attending the #afroCROWD Black History month event, Wikipedia edit-a-thon. The organization provided a wealth of information about Wikipedia editing. Everything was helpful for those just beginning, or veterans of the process. As many of you know Wikipedia has become the top source of information on the internet. Because it is crowdsourced that leaves a lot to be desired in the way of quality and quantity of content.

In this day and time of alternative facts the presentation of truth becomes even more important. Those of us who exist in marginalized or underrepresented realms are constantly presented with the difficulty of getting our stories heard. One of the ways we can do this is by becoming pro-active, and doing wikipedia editing for ourselves. This is vital for pagan activists, black activists, LGBTQ activists, and anyone trying to make a real difference in a world that doesnt, or cant hear our voices.

Recently feminists and other groups have taken up this challenge. In a recent article called Editing for Equality by Catch News they explain we write in reaction to all thats wrong and how were misrepresented, but another way to make the world see this is to be the primary source. If women, and people from other disenfranchised, marginalized and often forgotten social groups were made visible for who they are and what they have achieved, that would be the first step to actual emancipation.

Wikipedia edit-a-thon photo by Lilith Dorsey. All rights reserved.

So what is the best way to start ? First, if at all possible, I urge you to attend a Wikipedia edit-a-thon. These events are popping up all over the world. Even if one isnt present in your area, you may be able to video conference in to an event.

However, what if that isnt possible, and in that case there are several resources available to get you started. I highly recommend the informational video series on Wikipedia editing by Art and Feminism.

Art + Feminism Beginner Training

The first thing you are going to have to do is set up a Wikipedia user account, if you dont have one already. AfroCROWD recommends using a different name than your own. This will protect your identity and also possibly lend to the objectivity of your edits.

All your Wikipedia editing will also need to be sourced. What is considered a reliable source is a relatively short list. Books and established newspapers are the best sources to cite, but Wikipedia does make determinations on a case by case basis. One thing you cant do is use yourself as a source. This is troublesome for writers like myself. You also cant use another Wikipedia article as a source. Spend some time looking at the approved sources for citations to get an idea what is acceptable.

Before I went to the edit-a-thon one of my friends asked me to find out why many Wikipedia edits get removed. There are a few answers to this question. First everything has to be properly sourced, which I just mentioned. Then there is the problem of conflict of interest. Wikipedia takes great care to insure edits are not created by people looking for self-promotion. If you do have a connection to the material you are editing, make sure you mention this on the talk page for the entry you are editing. You can find the tab in the top left of the article. While at the afroCROWD event I found one edit I really wanted to make. Regular readers of this blog know I am a member of the Voodoo Spiritual Temple in New Orleans. When I looked I realized that the address for the temple on its Wikipedia page was incorrect (the temple relocated after suffering a fire last year.) In order to make this edit I disclosed my connection to the temple on the talk page, and then sourced the edit from a site that didnt belong to me or the temple. While these steps may seem like a bit of extra trouble, they will hopefully insure that your edits get approved.

Obviously there is much more to understand about this subject, but hopefully this will get you started. If possible get involved with the AfroCROWD organization (Afro Free Culture Crowdsourcing Wikimedia.) It is a new initiative which seeks to increase the number of people of African Descent who actively partake in the Wikimedia and free knowledge, culture and software movements. Since its launch during Black Wiki History Month in 2015, Afrocrowd has sensitized thousands in its target audience about free culture crowdsourcing and the need to close the multicultural and gender gaps in Wikipedia. Afrocrowd has also held monthly multilingual editathons in partnership with cultural institutions such as the Brooklyn Public Library, the Studio Museum in Harlem, MOMA, the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute and Haiti Cultural Exchange. Afrocrowd has also trained future trainers in the target community.

Wikipedia editing can be a valuable tool for pagan activism, black activism, and the furthering of knowledge for many underrepresented groups. I wish you the best of luck in your edits. Hopefully someday someone will make a Wikipedia page for me and my writing and films, hint hint. Until then you can follow my edits on my user page under LilithAuthor, and if you appreciate what you read here please remember to share.

Follow this link:
Wikipedia Editing : Essential Tips for Activists - Patheos - Patheos (blog)

The dominance of Wikipedia can no longer be denied. A local expression of a national initiative to address some of the online encyclopedia's biases takes place this week.

Once upon a time (not that long ago, actually), students were warned against even reading Wikipedia. The issue is that Wikipedia was open-source and editable, by anyone, anonymously. Information can be purposefully edited to be misleading, or missing something, or biased in some way.

One well-documented bias is gender. The flood of young men in the computer sciences means that the large body of information on Wikipedia skews toward the interests of that demographic.

Wikipedia is huge, with more than five million articles in English. Its also free. Warning people against using it really isn't an option anymore. So in an attempt to offset the bias, many museums, universities and science organizations all over the globe have organized edit-a-thons, events bringing together experts and interested people to edit and improve specific entries.

Art+Feminism is a national organization that began organizing Wikipedia Edit-A-Thons in 2014 to address the bias created by the lack of women editors. (Fewer than 10% of contributors to Wikipedia identify as female, according to the organization.)

The Carnegie Museum of Art hosts one such edit-a-thon this Saturday (just in time for Womens History Month). No prior Wikipedia editing knowledge is necessary. The museum will offer tutorials for beginner Wikipedians at 10:45 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., as well as reference materials and expert support. Bring your own laptop if you can, as the museums supply is limited.

See the rest here:
Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon at on Saturday at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art - PGH City Paper (blog)

Mashable

The great Garfield gender debate ends after Wikipedia edit war Mashable Garfield's first appearance was on June 19, 1978. Garfield was created by Jim Davis. Garfield is a tabby cat. Garfield is male. These are all things you will learn about Garfield at first glance of the Wikipedia page "Garfield." But what you don't ... The Debate Over Garfield's Gender Has Gone All The Way Up To CongressRefinery29 Wikipedia Erupts in Editing War Over Garfield the Cat's Gender ...Unicorn Booty (blog) Garfield's gender identity sparks 60-hour 'editing war' on WikipediaDaily Sabah Konbini US -UPROXX -New York Daily News -Mental Floss all 16 news articles »

The rest is here:
The great Garfield gender debate ends after Wikipedia edit war - Mashable

Garfield is lazy; Garfield is a cat; Garfield likes lasagna.

Is there really much more to say about Garfield? The characteris not complicated. Since the comic debuted in 1978, Garfields core qualities have shifted less than the mostly immobile cat himself.

But this is 2017 a timeof Internet wars, social conundrums and claims to competingevidence about Garfields gender identity.

Wikipedia had to put Garfields page on lockdown last week after a 60-hour editing war in which the characterslisted gender vacillated back and forth indeterminately like acartoon version of Schrdingers cat: male one minute; not the next.

He may have been a boy in 1981, but hes not now, one editor argued.

The debate has spilled into the broader Internet, where a Heat Street writer complained ofcultural marxists bent on turning one of pop cultures most iconic men into a gender fluid abomination.

[Students were told to select gender pronouns. One chose His Majesty to protest absurdity.]

It all started with a comment Garfields creator, Jim Davis, made two years ago in an interview with Mental Floss titledinnocuously: 20 Things You Might Not Know About Garfield.

Between the sitesplugs for Garfield DVDs, Davis revealed a few harmless curiosities about the cat: Garfield is named Gustav in Sweden. Garfield and his owner Jon Arbuckle live in Muncie, Ind.

Garfield is very universal, Davis told Mental Floss mid-interview. By virtue of being a cat, really, hes not really male or female or any particular race or nationality, young or old.

The remark caused no fuss. At first.

Until last week, when the satirist Virgil Texas dug the quote upand used it to make abold claim and bold move:

A brief note about Virgil Texas: Hes been known totroll before. The writeronce co-created a fictional pundit named Carl The Dig Diggler to parodythe media and annoy Nate Silver.

But Texas told The Washington Post he was only concerned about Garfield canon, in this case.

Texassaid he came across Daviss old quote while watching a five-hour, live-action, dark interpretation of Garfield (yes, really). Soheinvented aWikipedia editor (anyone can do it) named David The Milk Milkberg last week, and changed Garfields gender from male to none.

Almost instantly, the universe of Garfield fans clawed in.

AWikipediaeditor reverted Garfields gender back to male less than an hour after Texass change.

One minute later, someone in the Philippines made Garfield genderless again.

[Transgender boys mom sues hospital, saying he went into spiral after staff called him a girl]

And so on.Behind the scenes, Wikipedia users debatedhow toresolve the ragingedit war.

Every character (including Garfield himself!) constantly refers to Garfield unambiguously as male, and always using male pronouns, oneeditor wrote listing nearly three dozencomic strips across nearly four decades toprove the point:

The one where Jon tells Garfield good boy! before Garfield shoves a newspaper into his owners mouth.

The one where the catsmagical talking bathroom scale (probably a proxy for Garfield himself) refers to Garfield as a young man and a boy.

But another editor argued that only one of thoseexamples looks at self-identification a 1981 strip in which Garfieldthinks, Im a bad boy after eating a fern.

And Milkberg/Texas stuck to his claims: If one could locate another source where Jim Davis states that Garfields gender is male or female, then this would give rise to a serious controversy in Garfield canon, he wrote on the Wikipedia debatepage. Yet no such source has been identified, and I highly doubt one will ever emerge.

Threads of competing evidence spiraled through Twitter, where one commenter compared the Garfield dispute to Krazy Kat: asexually ambiguous cartoon predecessor,profiled last month by theNew Yorker.

Some huntedbeyond the comic sectionin search ofanswers,intothe ambiguous world ofGarfield-themed merchandise and quasi-canonical arguments.

And some took the whole thing as ajoke.

But others chided orphilosophized: Why must we care what Garfield is or isnt? Jimmy King asked. Who cares what someone else perceives as him being male or female?

Many pondered the meaning of Daviss words in 2014, which were confusing because thecreatorreferred toGarfield as he whilesuggestingthe cat was neither he nor she.

AWikipedia user proposed a compromise to provide both genders, each appropriately referenced: Male[1] and/or none[2]. That didnt get much traction.

Garfields gender swapped20 times over 2 days (during which his religion was briefly listed as Shiite Muslim for some reason) before an administrator was forced to step in.

Garfield was finally,officiallylisted asmale on Wikipedia citing four comic strips including one from 1979 in which a veterinariansays hes too fat.

Andthe page waslocked against more edits until March.

Yet a Heat Street writer draggedthe argument to the very end of February citing the spinoff character Garzookas hard pecs and prominent bulge as evidence ofa rugged, heterosexual American MAN.

That didntresolve anything, of course.

Maybe this will:

Garfield is male, Davis told The Washington Post on Tuesday.He has a girlfriend, Arlene.

Presented withnew evidence, the satiristdeferred to the creator. Hes in charge of the canon, Texas said. Im just curious how it squares with his prior statement

If I had the opportunity I would interrogate him.

ButWikipedia hasalready progressedbeyond gender disputes. Now other aspects of the fat, lazy cat are beingcalled into question.

Forget about his gender and alleged Muslim faith, a user wrote Monday. Need we really list Arlene under the spouse category?

More reading:

This is what happens when two Internet nerds battle over politics

With his first-ever Garfield musical, creator Jim Davis revels in a dream fulfilled

From our 1982 archives: The Cat That Rots the Intellect

The rest is here:
Garfield's a boy right? How a cartoon cat's gender identity launched a Wikipedia war. - Washington Post

BBC News

MWC 2017: Wikipedia goes data-free in Iraq - BBC News BBC News People will not have to pay mobile data charges to access the online encyclopaedia. Asiacell Grants 11M Iraqi Subscribers Access to Wikipedia | Digital ...Digital Trends Asiacell to offer free access to Wikipedia in IraqPhys.Org all 3 news articles »

See the rest here:
MWC 2017: Wikipedia goes data-free in Iraq - BBC News - BBC News