Whose Knowledge?/VisibleWikiWomen
Many articles about women, in different Wikipedia languages, lack pictures. Women are invisible for so many reasons, including because the copyright holders of pictures preserve their exclusive rights, instead of using a Creative Commons license suitable for use on Wikipedia.
That’s why this March we are starting the #VisibleWikiWomen Challenge to reach out to women's rights and feminist NGOs, photographers, libraries, archives, and anyone who has access to pictures of women (with proper consent) to donate photos.
Half a billion people read Wikipedia every month, and it is the 5th most visited website in the world.[1][2] Yet women are still underrepresented in Wikipedia's biographies: less than 1/4 of all Wikipedia biographies represent women - that's still true for nearly every language version of Wikipedia.[3] And we estimate that less than 20% of biographies on Wikipedia contain any images at all. Women’s knowledge and contributions to the world are invisible in so many ways. Let’s change this!
Project organizers[edit]
- Whose Knowledge? co-founders began thinking about this campaign in 2017 with a group of Wikimedians from the around the world.
- May Hachem93 and Señoritaleona are organizing the 2018 challenge as #VisibleWikiWomen Coordinators for Whose Knowledge?.
Why VisibleWikiWomen?[edit]
We are focused on gathering and sharing quality images under free licenses or public domain via Wikimedia Commons, so that these can be used to illustrate biographies of women on Wikipedia. These can be photographs or illustrations of women or images of their work, with their consent. We are looking for contemporary or historical images, of living women or women who lived some time ago. They can be new photos taken for the occasion, drawn portraits where no photos are available, or archival images.
Partners are encouraged to host or attend local events in their communities where photos can be taken or uploaded, release photos you might already have under free licence, and help promote and publicize this project. We invite local groups to lead this effort in ways that make most sense for your countries and interests: we’d love to learn from you! Planning is underway now – please contact us at visiblewikiwomen
whoseknowledge.org to share your ideas.
Photographer Kearra Amaya Gopee and artist Cicely Carew
How can I contribute?[edit]
- Take pictures at public events in which notable women will be present, like conferences, live shows, etc.,
- Communicate with photographers who may be able to donate images they've already taken of female public figures,
- Search public domain pictures (the pictures whose license dropped as their owners passed away before 50+ or 70+ years, depending on the country),
- Gather pictures from institutions and archives,
- Create illustrations portraying remarkable women who may not have any images available under free license,
- Once you have an image with the proper license, upload it to Commons with the VisibleWikiWomen Category
- Categorize images in Commons and give them better descriptions,
- Add the images to Wikipedia articles, Wikidata items, Wikiquote and other sister projects,
- Write and translate articles about the portrayed women who do not yet have them, in your language,
- Organize events like edit-a-thons at your country,
- Contact us at visiblewikiwomen
whoseknowledge.org and we'll help you get started! - Participate in the online edit-a-thon!
Upload images[edit]
Use the Upload Wizard for this campaign.
Resources to help you[edit]
The following resource guides offer some answers to common questions about working with images. Feel free to adapt, add, and translate to suit your own needs! And feedback on any of these guides is welcome.
- Worklists
- Lists of women's articles that are missing images - Here are some ideas for women's images to focus on. You can add your own lists too!
- Finding or creating images
- How to find free images – Cómo encontrar imágenes libres – كیف تجد صوًرا حرة
- How to ask for image donations – Cómo solicitar donaciones de imágenes – كیف تطلب التبرع بصور)
- Creating drawings for Wikipedia – Creando dibujos para Wikipedia – عمل رسومات لویكیبیدیا
- Uploading images
- How to upload images to Wikimedia Commons – Cómo subir imágenes a Wikimedia Commons – كيف ترفع صورًا على ويكيميديا كومنز
- Don't forget to categorize your images under the category VisibleWikiWomen so we can find them later!
- Licensing
- Adding images to Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia: do's and don'ts – Agregando imágenes a Wikipedia qué hacer y qué no – إضافة الصور إلى ویكیمیدیا كومنز وویكیبیدیا: افعل ولا تفعل
- Giving consent for images on Wikipedia – Consentimiento para imágenes en Wikipedia – على الصور التي تنشر على ویكیبیدیا إعطاء الموافقة
- Other guides we like
Super heroes in collaboration (Join us!)[edit]
- Women in Red and at #WikiWomenInRed
- Art + Feminism #NowEditingAF
- Mujeres latinoamericanas en Wikimedia
- Wikimedia Tunisie #WikimediaTN
- Association CLibre #CLibreTn
- Wikimedia Israel #WikimediaIL
- The Black Lunch Table #blacklunchtable
- Global Fund for Women
- AfroCROWD
- Wikimujeres
- Wikimedia Community User Group Brazil
- Wikimedia Uruguay
- Wikimedia Argentina
- Wikimedia Bolivia
- WikiDonne (#WikiDonne)
- O Foundation
- Open Foundation West Africa #OFWAFRICA
Social media (Join the conversation!)[edit]
- #VisibleWikiWomen
- Visit our Facebook page! Suggest figures you want to make visible.
Edit-a-thons (Find an event near you!)[edit]
In March, there will be many local events to improve the visibility of women in Wikipedia. Edit-a-thons, editing workshops and other activities are being organized by wikipedians around the world.
If you want to be part of such events, search for an event near you, or contact your Wikimedia local chapter. Remember that in addition to creating articles about notable women, you can also take or look for pictures to illustrate them.
Would you like to organize a specific event for the VisibleWikiWomen challenge? We can give you some ideas, resources and support to carry out this plan. Just contact us at visiblewikiwomen@whoseknowldge.org and let's talk!
If you are an Wikimedia event host, like an edit-a-thon, you can join the #VisibleWikiWomen challenge, inviting participants to upload photos of notable women to Wikimedia Commons and to illustrate articles in Wikipedia. We suggest you add some activities related to this challenge in your event. Why not set up a photographic set and invite some notable women from your city to be photographed for Commons? Or maybe do a specific workshop on the use of images in Wikipedia? Join the challenge adding your event below.
Alphabetical by country, Global events with event pages at top
2018 Outcomes[edit]
Our campaign on numbers (May 21, 2018):
- Category "VisibleWikiWomen" (including 1 level of subcategories) has 1405 files
- Total image usages: 972 (69%)
- Distinct images used: 483 (34.38%)
- Images was used on 44 different Wikipedia languajes
- Most of the uses were in Wikidata (386) and English Wikipedia (234)
To explore live results from GLAMourous analytics:
- Search depth 0 (only VisibleWikiWomen as main category)
- Search depth 1 (main category + 1 subcategory)
- Search depth 2 (main category + 2 subcategories)
Some ideas and interesting findings that we have share on our blog during the campaign:
- #VisibleWikiWomen: postcards of power and diversity
- The Journey through our #VisibleWikiWomen campaign: 10 times our imagined impact!
- Sharing Fuegia’s Memory
- The Life and Death of Marielle Franco on Wikipedia
