Edit-athon aims to put left-out black artists into Wikipedia
If you're trying to measure an artist's notability, one gauge is whether his or her work is owned by a major institution such as, say, the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Yet, of the 50 or so notable artists featured in the museum's exhibition "Represent: 200 Years of African American Art," only five or six have comprehensive entries on Wikipedia, a site that has become, for many, the de facto first stop for information on almost any topic.
Twenty-seven have no entry at all, according to museum staff.
It's a symptom, they say, of a broader systemic bias within the user-edited encyclopedia, where 90 percent of editors are male, and minorities are significantly underrepresented.
On Wednesday night, researchers, art historians, students, and the general public will be invited to help rectify that at the museum's first-ever Wikipedia Edit-athon.
Such events have been popping up with increasing frequency over the last few years in and around Philadelphia. The subject-specific events are designed to train amateur editors and encourage them to create and expand entries on overlooked topics.
Some are organized by libraries, galleries, and universities that increasingly view Wikipedia-editing as part of their mission. Others are spearheaded by editor-activists who recognize the importance of bringing different perspectives to this collective repository of knowledge.
"They're doing this because they want people from those communities to take control over their own history and say, 'This is what happened. This is what's important,' and not leave it to somebody else to decide that," said Mary Mark Ockerbloom, who works for the Chemical Heritage Foundation as their Wikipedian in Residence, making her, she believes, the city's only professional, full-time Wikipedia editor.
Recently, gender bias, in particular, has received significant attention from critics - such as when a number of female authors on Wikipedia were relegated from the category "American Novelists" to merely "American Women Novelists." A study published this year found that entries about women were significantly more likely to discuss romantic relationships or family issues.
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Edit-athon aims to put left-out black artists into Wikipedia