Grants:IdeaLab/Art+Feminism Editathon expansion
Project idea[edit]
What is the problem you're trying to solve?[edit]
Wikipedia’s gender trouble is well documented. In a 2010 survey, Wikimedia found that less than 13% of its contributors are female. The reasons for the gender gap are up for debate: suggestions include leisure inequality, how gender socialization shapes public comportment, and the contentious nature of Wikipedia’s talk pages. However, the practical effect of this disparity is not: content is skewed by the lack of female participation, resulting in systemic absences in an increasingly important repository of shared knowledge.
What is your solution?[edit]
On February 1st 2014 during a Wikipedia event called Art+Feminism, approximately 600 participants convened in 31 locations in 6 Countries (USA, Canada, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom) to edit articles on Art+Feminism. During this day, at least 101 new articles were created, and at least 90 articles improved. Highlights from the 40+ press stories include a LA Weekly feature story, the most shared article in ARTnews history, and a 30 minute podcast from Bitch Magazine. By all accounts, this was a success, with some saying this may have been the largest multi-location edit-a-thon ever. Furthermore, initial exploration with Wikimetrics indicate a high editor retention rate.
The organizers of the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Editathon seek funds to expand the success of this bootstrapped event. Operational costs for one year, and startup costs to build infrastructure for years to come. We think it possible to use this opportunity to expand our process to include organizers in other subject areas, under the +Feminism umbrella (e.g. Health+Feminism, or History+Feminism).
Goals[edit]
This grant has goals that fit into two categories: Program and Events Grants, and Individual Engagement Grants.
Programs and Events: It is our goal to run two NYC training events in the Fall/Winter, one large NYC editathon on March 8th, and coordinate satellite training in the Fall/Winter, and satellite editathons around the world on March 8th.
Individual Engagement: We are also requesting funding to allow us to build more robust procedural and personnel infrastructure that would allow for the project to grow, and for others to replicate our process. We will build on existing infrastructure on Wikipedia to create slides, advertisements, targeted training, and other reusable materials. We will build these so they can be used both by our group, and satellite events, as well as reused by other gender gap campaigns and outreach.
Grant Proposals[edit]
We have created two grant proposals, one for a PEG grant and another for an IEG grant. We welcome your comment or endorsement there.
Endorsements[edit]
- OR drohowa (talk) 14:19, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
- I volunteered at the last NYC event without being a part of organizing it or planning it. The organizers managed it well, the topic was attractive to people who do not normally attend these kinds of events, and the organizational interest in connecting to this was more than I had seen for many other events. There is something here worth supporting. Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:55, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
- yes, i would like to see training like the GLAMcamp of WMDC, for experienced wikimedians and institution staff, to make these events routine. Slowking4 (talk) 18:17, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
- I will link these proposals to some female user on itwiki who cared about the topic, if they want to add some detailed suggestions.--Alexmar983 (talk) 23:46, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, these events ate inspiring. --Djembayz (talk) 23:24, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
- Yes Jane023 (talk) 21:26, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
- Worth supporting, good track record of the project. Would be also great to see a geographic expansion of the project so that it could cover more countries and languages — NickK (talk) 23:35, 2 April 2015 (UTC)