Wikipedia:Meetup/justfortherecord/Events/Red-links

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.

ABOUTEVENTSRESOURCESPRESS

22.10.2016
RED LINKS

Just For The Record presents a new event!

Just For The Record’s workshop will focus on the production of more equal knowledge on Wikipedia – a platform to re-write history in a new and collaborative way.

The collaborative writing of its contents produces a sort of patchwork of different voices, which represents a potential for diversity. In this digital fabric, how are our voices interweaved? How does this diversity of voices influence the network of subjects represented? Can it help to develop intersectional approaches and go beyond biases inherited from a long history of writing knowledge?

The presence or absence of links between articles can help identify patterns of gender bias. As observed by a 2015 study, “women on Wikipedia tend to be more linked to men than vice versa”. Wikipedia pages are linked to other pages within the platform by different types of threads: blue for the links to existing pages, and red for the pages that have either been deleted or that are yet to be created. Red links are therefore making visible something that doesn’t exist on the encyclopedia, a hole in the fabric. They can also be taken as an invitation for other users to acknowledge that information is missing and to take action. Projects like Women in Red are using this feature to publish lists of women whose names are still in red, inviting us to activate them thus turning them blue.

After the introductory presentations, we would like to invite the participants to discuss these issues and start editing Wikipedia, weaving different articles together to create unprecedented connections.

This workshop is part of a program put together by Hana Miletic as part of her exhibition "Materials".

Pictures of the event

Event details

• Venue: Beursschouburg, Rue A. Ortsstraat 20-28, 1000 Brussel
• Date: Saturday October 22nd 2016
• Time: 15:00 – 19:00
• Language: Dutch, English, French
• Cost: Free
• Participants: Open to anyone interested in this experience: beginners welcome! débutant(e)s bienvenu(e)s! 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.
• A temporary library will be set up by the participants who are invited to bring their books and digital documents to share with the others!

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

• Add your name to the participant list of this event at the bottom of this page
• Write some informations on your own wiki page by clicking on your user name at the top of the page (so that your name doesn't appear in red when you start editing articles)
• 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 article to be improved
• Women Artists, by the Women in Red
• A list by the project Women in Red
• Le pendant francophone du projet Women in Red Les sans pages
• 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!

Resources for editing

• Art+Feminism resources
• Gender gap resources
• Writing about women
• Gender neutrality in English
• Avoiding Heterosexual Bias in Language
• the he-she package

Thoughts in progress

Ideas

The new woman's survival catalog

References to create the page

• http://voices.revealdigital.com/cgi-bin/independentvoices?a=d&d=CBGJBDI19740201.1.1&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN---------------1

herself, February, 1974 (see page 2: Letters)

• http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1975/10/24/glorying-in-womanhood-pbmben-are-the/1
• http://voices.revealdigital.com/cgi-bin/independentvoices?a=d&d=CAEFJJJ19740201.1.1&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN---------------1

Amazone, volume 2; issue 8, February 1974 see page 13

• http://nomorepotlucks.org/site/tools-for-the-feminist-present-hazel-meyer-and-cait-mckinney/1 (reimagined as fantasy mail-order catalog of today)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDQrJOIYJ_41 (mentioned in video)
• https://books.google.be/books?id=jFSSAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=%22the+new+women%27s+survival+catalog%22&source=bl&ots=spE7Pq7dRF&sig=UmUY_PDHrgYdOReVV0EBW7ktfkw&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi5i6vu6O7PAhVnB8AKHWQyCpcQ6AEINTAE#v=onepage&q=%22the%20new%20women%27s%20survival%20catalog%22&f=false

Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement Across Four Decades of Change, Myra Marx Ferree, Beth Hess, Routledge, 3 mai 2002, chapter 5: Feminist organizations in transition, page 101

• https://books.google.be/books?id=f8mxEGQ5bu0C&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=%22the+new+women%27s+survival+catalog%22&source=bl&ots=TAZIYIa1W6&sig=uqcRHImMW6grMpHIjxs3VIQKOsA&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi5i6vu6O7PAhVnB8AKHWQyCpcQ6AEIOzAF#v=onepage&q=%22the%20new%20women%27s%20survival%20catalog%22&f=false

Into Our Own Hands: The Women's Health Movement in the United States, 1969-1990, page 243

Follow-up needed: discussions, deletions

• https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Te_beoordelen_pagina%27s/Toegevoegd_20161006#Toegevoegd_06.2F10:_Deel_1
• searching reference to create the page on the new women's survival catalog

we still need to find a more !

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayna_Rapp. Creation of a page that has been speedy deleted but then to resuscitate

Articles improved

• Marie De Keyser, looking for more source + adding more links to link it to other page/artists. Also would like to question the fact that she's mentioned under her married name but all the reference catalogs mentioned her under and birth name. How can we change or deal with that ?
• Rachida Lamrabet

Articles created

External links

• Beursschouwburg’s website

Participants - Sign Up Here!

Sign here to help us learn more about how users interact with Wikipedia! If you sign up, we can observe how your username uses the Wikimedia projects during and after this event. This will help us to better measure the effectiveness of this event and similar programs. This means that your publicly available activity and the information you share with us during this event may be processed by the Wikimedia Foundation, Art+Feminism, and the organizers of the local event, and may be transferred to or from the US and other countries that may not have the same level of privacy regulation that your country does. However, we will not share your information with third parties or publicly unless it's in aggregated or anonymized form.
Prior to the event:

1. Do you have a Wikipedia User Name?

   No? Create a Wikipedia account

   Yes? Go to Step #2

2. Sign up! Add your Wikipedia User Name to this section by clicking the blue button below (follow instructions). Your name will be added to the bottom of this page
   

Don't worry! If you haven't edited Wikipedia before and don't have a Wikipedia User Name yet, we will help you on the day of the event! And remember to have fun!

To sign up for this event: Log in or create an account.

Red Links 22.10.2016:

• Léonie Butler (talk) 11:16, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

• Sarah magnan (talk) 11:08, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• Jftr (talk) 14:39, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• 80.200.249.14 (talk) 14:39, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• AlexSrbs (talk) 14:40, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• Hanamiletic (talk) 14:42, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• AsSim (talk) 14:44, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• Anvdml (talk) 15:38, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• Lfurter (talk) 15:55, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• ScarletBrapae (talk) 15:58, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• Simone doBomVoar (talk) 16:48, 22 October 2016 (UTC)