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Through the Moleskine Foundation and WikiAfrica, students are trying to address the lack of information about Africa on Wikipedia.

Adama Sanneh, co-founder and CEO of the Moleskine Foundation, helping a student.

Image: Moleskine Foundation

Wikipedia, one of the most well-known and frequently visited sites on the internet today, is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its founding in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. The site has more than 56 million articles in 321 languages, but the site's creators are using the anniversary as an opportunity to highlight one of the biggest criticisms of the site: the lack of information about Africa.

Wikipedia is the 10th-most visited site on earth, but in an interview, Adama Sanneh, co-founder and CEO of the Moleskine Foundation, explained that there are more entries about the City of Paris than about the entire African continent.

To address this problem, Wikipedia has worked with Sanneh, the Moleskine Foundation and thousands of young people across the continent to add more information about the dozens of countries and cultures across Africa.

In an interview, Sanneh said young Africans are now creating, expanding and enhancing Wikipedia content about Africa into more than 17 African languages including Swahili, Igbo and Yoruba. Much of this new information includes lifesaving COVID-19 content related to vaccination and social distancing.

SEE: Big data's role in COVID-19 (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

The Moleskine Foundation's WikiAfrica Education initiative immerses young people in experiences that combine knowledge and activism, inspiring them to participate in the production of knowledge, rather than just its consumption.

Sanneh said that since helping to launch WikiAfrica in 2006 with a number of different groups, it has generated over 40,000 Wikipedia contributions, and over 200 articles in 18 languages about COVID-19 in the past year alone. Sanneh, the son of an Italian mother and a Senegalese/Gambian father, has lived on both continents, and said misconceptions and misinformation about Africa shape the way the world sees the continentand even how Africans see themselves.

"We're missing a tremendous opportunity to tell the story from the perspective of the protagonist and really develop more language, more possibilities, more imagination. People on the continent don't see themselves reflected online. I grew up in Italy where, as a minority, I didn't exist. There is nothing online that can reflect my experience," Sanneh said.

"So we were looking for ways to tackle this. How can we support a creative process in which we can transform young people from passive knowledge consumers into active knowledge producers about themselves? Wikipedia is a great invention that allows you to do exactly this. Wikipedia allows you to tell your story, in your environment, using your own language."

Sanneh explained that one of the first events the organization held was a workshop in South Africa with the museum complex Constitution Hill.

They brought dozens of young people together to work on 12 Wikipedia entries or profiles on Black women that were erased by history. The articles garnered more than 200,000 views within a few days.

"It was really a moment where we could showcase how knowledge, creativity, activism and technology come together to transform one person, but through the transformation of one person, they enable the transformation of the community," he said.

For Sanneh, one of the biggest parts of the program is to empower young people across Africa to take control of their own narrative and take the initiative themselves to explain their cultures to the world.

Most of what has been written online about Africa has come from the West, and Sanneh has focused the Foundation's work on empowering a new generation of Wikipedia editors based in Africa.

"We don't have solutions, but what we try to do is encourage them to create change, learn about it themselves and use technology in a very scalable and effective way," he said.

Perry Mason Adams, a student and one of the Moleskine Foundation's most productive members, joined the organization's latest online campaign on COVID-19, aiming to write articles about the pandemic on Wikipedia in African languages.

"I collaborated with my mom to write the articles, and she did the proofreading and I did the translation of the base article in English to IsiXhosa and IsiZulu. The process was so enriching and eye-opening for the both of us. My mom said reading the article in isiZulu 'took her back to her schooling days' because there isn't enough material on the internet in our native tongues. I encourage everyone to join in and narrow the knowledge gap on the internet," Adams said.

"Being a part of this program means that I can be a part of the solution to bridging the knowledge gap on the internet, promoting the use and perseveration of our indigenous languages and doing such important work from a fresh perspective."

Adams said having information in local languages was pivotal for the future and cited a famous quote from former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela, who once said talking to a person in a language they understand goes into the person's head, but talking to the person in their native language goes to their heart.

Adams said seeing the reaction of his mother drove home the importance of using technology to preserve indigenous languages, and the need for local information about COVID-19 was vital.

"It has been both a learning and rewarding experience. Learning in the sense that it has made me more curious about the use of our indigenous languages. Rewarding being, a part of the generation that not only uses the language but preserves it as well," Adams said.

Sanneh noted that much of his work was about using creativity and technology for social change while also providing spaces for young people across Africa to express themselves and share information.

The organization has started a new podcast titled "Creativity Pioneers" that focuses on solving inequality and racial injustice through creativity.

"We are a process-oriented organization and we believe that if we create this content, if we support young people to develop those tools, if we create spaces where these young people can thrive and can exercise their criticality imagination, then we can really have the possibility to create some change," he said.

"We live in the creativity era. We live in an era where information is not at the center anymore. It's not enough anymore. Not even knowledge is at the core. The core is creativity, because the question is, how are we going to be able to use information and the knowledge? We believe that creative spaces are integral to giving a chance to many communitiesespecially marginalized communitiesto really build and imagine a different future."

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For Wikipedia's 20th anniversary, students across Africa add vital information to site - TechRepublic

Costa Rica's first female anthropologist, a19th-century Dutch prophetess, and a Turkish migrant worker who set herself on fire in a Hamburg marketplace are just some examples of the over 1,500 women Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight has helped place back into the annals of history.

From Nevada City, California, Stephenson-Goodknight spends hours every day creating Wikipedia articles about inspiring women from years gone by.

She doesn't get paid for this tiring work. The retired health administrator is driven to do this by a persistent belief.

"If I don't stop and do this now, these women will be lost to all of history," she told Insider.

Read more: More US adults use YouTube than any other social media but Facebook reigns supreme among older Americans

Stephenson-Goodknight's desire to bring notable women from out of the shadows is what encouraged her to help establish Wikipedia's "Women In Red."

The project, founded in 2015, is dedicated to redressing the content gender gap on Wikipedia by increasing the number of women's biographies on the website.

This is done by turning 'red links,' marking a Wikipedia page that has not yet been created, into blue links that lead to entries documenting notable women's lives from history.

Hundreds of volunteers worldwide have joined this mission, working tirelessly to create and edit articles that tell the stories of forgotten women.

The project's success means that Women In Red has become a major force in addressing the internet's systemic bias.

The project was inspired by the release of an academic paper in October 2014.

The research, led by social scientists from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Yahoo! Labs, found that only 15.5 percent of Wikipedia's biographies were about women or women's issues.

Roger Bamkin, a retired engineer and prolific Wikipedia editor, was astonished by this statistic. "It was a lot better than paper encyclopedias, but it was still embarrassingly low," he told Insider.

Eager to see these numbers change, Bamkin reached out to Stephenson-Goodknight to suggest a solution.

They both knew that a lot of this gender bias could be attributed to the fact that Wikipedia editors are overwhelmingly male. Ninety percent of contributors reported their gender as male, according to a 2018 Wikimedia Foundation survey.

But, Bamkin said, it would take too long to correct this. "My idea was much too important to wait until we got enough women editors," he said.

Instead, the proposal was to encourage editors of all genders and walks of life to volunteer some time by following the red links and creating biographies about women.

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, the co-founder of Women In Red, pictured at a WikiConference in November 2019. Victor Grigas/ Wikimedia Commons

"Thankfully, people loved the idea," said Stephenson-Goodknight.

The pair launched their first 'Edit-a-thon' an in-person event where amateur Wikipedia editors came together to socialize and create a vast number of articles about important women from history.

Now, several virtual Edit-a-thons take place every month for Women In Red.

Edit-a-thons encourage volunteers to produce content on certain topics. Some last for a few days. Others are year-long campaigns.

In the past year, Edit-a-thons have focused on creating articles about Black women, women in conflict zones, and Indigenous women.

A continuing project, #1Day1Woman, challenges volunteers to create one article per day about notable women.

An example of one of the 'red lists' used by Women In Red to identify pages that still need to be created. Women In Red/ Wikipedia

Lists of red links are provided as inspiration. The lists are developed in numerous ways; some are crowdsourced, bots accumulate others. "We've created about 800 lists of women missing from history," Stephenson-Goodknight said.

Kate Antiqueight, from Cork, Ireland, is involved in the #1Day1Woman challenge. "I'm trying to reach the end of this year slightly better than I did last year," she told Insider.

Last year, she wrote 199 articles about women. This year, her goal is to get to 365. "

She's committed to the cause because of long-standing frustration with iconic females being ignored. "Women have been airbrushed out of history," she added.

Some volunteers have made creating Wikipedia entries into a full-time job.

"I spend around nine hours a day writing on Wikipedia," a volunteer who goes by 'Susun' told Insider. "I retired 12 years ago and this is what I do, all day."

A Women In Red banner that displays some of the biographies created by volunteers. Victuallers/ Wikimedia Commons

Susun was motivated to participate in Women In Red because she also grew up feeling like women were being erased from history.

"You'd go through a library and there would be all these books about great men in history but there just weren't any about women," she said. "For me, doing this gives young girls the sense that there are other people out there like them and that the possibilities are endless."

Susun requested that Insider withhold her last name because of her fear of harassment online.

"It's a pretty hostile environment, just like any online environment can be for women," she said. "There's a whole group of people that say we're pushing an agenda. It's too feminist, that sort of stuff."

Hannah, a 22-year-old volunteer from Toronto, Canada, also requested that her full name not be identified.

This is because she is concerned about an event that took place last month. A prominent White House photographer took issue with her Wikipedia biography, created by a Women In Redvolunteer, and proceeded to identify and target the creator. She called the volunteer's family, employer, and the police, Hannah said.

Even the co-founder has had issues with cyber harassment.Stephenson-Goodknight received a thinly-veiled rape threat on her Wikipedia Talk page shortly after starting the project, she told Insider.

Aware of this, she has tried to ensure that the Women In Reddiscussions are an "anti-harassment zone."

"Our Talk page is a place where, if someone becomes uncivil, tried to harass an editor or anything, that comment would be immediately dealt with," she said.

Stephenson-Goodknight was awarded co-Wikimedian of the Year in 2016 by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. This was, in part, thanks to her efforts to combat harassment on the website.

Stephenson-Goodknight has received many plaudits for her work on Women In Red. In 2018, for example, she was honored with a Serbian knighthood.

Her proudest achievement, however, is playing a part in the creation of approximately 140,000 new Wikipedia articles on women.

This has increased the share of biographies about women from 15.5 percent to 18 percent. Approximately 700,000 of Wikipedia's 3.9 million biographies are now about women, according to Wikipedia's diversity tool Humaniki.

While there is still a long way to go, she said she is pleased with the progress.

"The initial goal was just to move the needle," Stephenson-Goodknight said. "We're not looking to get to 50 percent. We just want to improve from where we were because we know that we can do better."

The founders of Women In Red, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight and Roger Bamkin, at an event at the University of California Irivine in May 2019. Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight/ Wikimedia Commons

Bamkin agrees. "If you weren't to a princess or a queen before 1820, you pretty much didn't exist in history," he said.

A more attainable goal, therefore, is to reach parity for all living women.

Doing so, Bamkin said, would have significant consequences. "When my granddaughter looks at Wikipedia, she'll see more women role models than she might have done if we hadn't made the effort."

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Hundreds of dedicated Wikipedia volunteers are defying the sexists to write women back into history - Insider

Guinness has partnered with Wikimedia UK in a bid to tackle the lack of representation of women in sport.

As part of the brands Never Settle campaign, the pair will work together to ensure that every member of the competing home nation squads for this years Womens Six Nations Finals Weekend is properly recorded on Wikipedia.

Guinness has highlighted the fact that only 6% of sports media coverage in the UK is dedicated to female athletes and teams, with ust 18% of all biographies on Wikipedia of women. Indeed, the brand says the gap widens further in sport where just 3% of 14,916 rugby related biographies are of female players. The current Guinness Six Nations mens squads have 392% more words devoted to them than their female counterparts.

The brand also points out that only 30% of the current Womens Six Nation squad players have a presence on Wikipedia at all, while of those who did, some 86% didnt have an image or more than a very basic biography.

In addition, the international team pages see a stark disparity across the mens and womens games, with the current male rugby squads receiving more than 9,000 words on their page, whereas the womens teams have on average just 900.

In order to tackle the inequality, Guinness has invited Wikipedia editors, womens rugby fans, writers, and journalists to take part in the campaign, adding to the stories of past and present personalities.

The brand says it is also working with players on a global scale to update their Twitter profiles, ensuring they are in line with the new verification standards. According to Guinness, this will provide female players with the same platform to build connections with their fans, and will also help to improve and increase conversation about the players and the sport globally.

In the last twelve months, out of the 307,541 tweets mentioning rugby or the six nations globally, only 10% of those were about the womens game.

Were delighted to be partnering with GUINNESS for this project, to shine a light on womens rugby players and their achievements, said Lucy Crompton-Reid, CEO, Wikimedia UK.

As the UK charity for the global Wikimedia movement, we are well aware of the gender gap online which reflects systemic bias and historical inequalities and are working with a wide range of partners to increase the representation of women on Wikipedia.

Neil Shah, Head of Guinness GB added: We know its hard to be what you cant see. We believe the first step in increasing the visibility for womens rugby players in line with the mens game is spotlighting who they are this step will make getting to know them easier than ever by bringing their stories to Wikipedia.

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Guinness and Wikipedia to tackle rugby gender disparity - Sport Industry Group

Two Aboriginal languages Atayal and Sediq have been added to the languages in which information is available on Wikipedia, the Ministry of Education said on Thursday.

The languages, which Wikipedia lists as Tayal and Sediq Taroko, were recognized by the online encyclopedia and granted their own language option on March 16, the ministry said.

There were 2,400 Wikipedia entries in Atayal and 1,037 in Sediq, the ministry said.

The two became the second and third languages of Taiwan-based Aborigines on Wikipedia, following the Sakizaya language, which was added in November 2019, it said.

Before recognizing a language and allowing it its own section, the Wikimedia Foundation assesses how many active users have contributed to entries in the language over a period.

Amis might also receive its own Wikipedia option soon, the foundation said.

The ministry, in collaboration with National Chengchi University (NCCU), launched a Wikipedia project six years ago with the goal of promoting writing in Aboriginal languages and encouraging the languages use among young people, Deputy Minister of Education Lin Teng-chiao () said.

However, while spoken Aboriginal languages in Taiwan have been used and passed on, their writing systems are far more recent, mainly based on the Latin alphabet.

They were not officially recognized until 2005.

A 2016 report commissioned by the Council of Indigenous Peoples evaluated native language proficiency among Aborigines through tests given to more than 20,000 people in 16 languages.

The report showed that only 27.6 percent of Sediq were able to read the newly developed script, while less than 12 percent knew how to write it.

Only 20.6 percent of Atayal were capable of reading the script, while less than 5 percent could write it, the report said.

When it comes to preserving languages, speaking and writing are both important, Lin said, adding that through the project, young Aborigines obtain knowledge in their mother tongue under the guidance of their elders.

NCCU professor Lim Siu-theh (), who presides over the project, said that in addition to documenting the written language, the group also reinvents words so they can be used in a modern context.

Hitay-Payan, a leader of the editing team for Atayal entries on Wikipedia, said that there were challenges creating entries in his native tongue.

The team began by translating introductory texts on well-known people, he said.

Lituk Teymu, who leads the Sediq editing team, said that she was pleased to see the language of her ancestors being given a global stage.

The team would continue to promote the Sediq language, she said.

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A unique online project is putting a spotlight on women artists from Central Europe. Some 250 artists spanning three generations fromPoland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary are included on a growing platform that hopes to uplift womens voices and highlight their artistic contributions in a region where they have historically been overlooked.

Created by the Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation in Warsaw together with international partners, the easy-to-search archive, calledSecondary Archive, should be useful for scholars and curators from the region.

In Central and Eastern Europe, we were always educated with Western historical canons. We know more about Western history than we know of our neighboring countries, Polish-based Agata Cielak, the Secondary Archives coordinator and an artist listed on the platform, told Artnet News. It is important for us to bring the region together and understand what that actually meansbecause we come from similar backgrounds, historically speaking, though the contemporary situation is completely different.

The projecta sort of Wikipedia for Central European female artistswas built out from an initial core list of artists devised by theKatarzyna Kozyra Foundation and its partners. Organizers then invited the living artists on the list to share their work and write a statement about what they create and why.The aim was to invite female artists to speak for themselves,Cielak said.

While the political and art historical trajectories in the nations in the archive are unique, they were all marked by decades of communism which, according to the platforms statement to Artnet News, was a particularly difficult time due to the barriers it introduced to the cultural and social emancipation of women.

More recently, there has been a staggering regression in gender equity in Poland, and the platform has offered an opportunity for artists to voice their grievances. A near-total ban on abortion in the Central European nation sparked the historic Women Strike protests last fall, which also drew on the work of a number of artists.

In Poland today, Iam perceived by ultra-right-wing circles as adifferent, alien, childless, middle-aged woman, a widow, aconcubine, contaminated by COVID, an artist, writesAleksandra Ska.

The platforms name,Secondary Archive, plays on the idea of the second sex as coined by Simone de Beauvoir in her 1949 book, which explored womens place in a male-dominated society.

Cielak said the project already has concretized plans to expand to Belarus and Ukraine, and eventually Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

Visit the Secondary Archive here.

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Experts Launch a Massive New Wikipedia-Style Archive to Address the Lack of Research on Women Artists From Central Europe - artnet News