WE ARE HERE: Wikipedia edit-a-thon 2024

We Are Here is one of the preeminent Black feminist magazines in our collection, alongside FOWAAD, Mukti, In Print, Speak Out, and the ephemera of the Black Lesbian and Gay Centre. It’s a point of knowledge injustice that many of these collectives don’t show up on Wikipedia, the people’s encyclopedia, so we set about changing that.

Thank you to everyone who came to our Wikipedia training evening and weekend wiki-a-thon! It was a smash success, we created brand new Wikipedia pages for the BLGC, Mukti, and Speak Out. We edited 14 articles, added 130 references, and uploaded two images to Wikimedia commons.

We also had some deep chats about Wikipedia, subjectivity, and knowledge justice. We talked about what it means to decolonise Wikipedia and feminist editing, in a context where ideas like objectivity are steeped in white patriarchy, and access to ‘reliable sources’ is heavily gate kept. When editing these pages, we were coming up against some conventions on Wikipedia that uphold patriarchy and white supremacy, as they prioritise sources that are produced or vouched for by institutions. By directly citing the periodicals, and grassroots and DIY sources, we could build a fuller picture of the history, and push to change how Wikipedians evaluate knowledge.

There’s still work to be done! Pages still need to be made for We Are Here and In Print, and the pages we have made can be fleshed out. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, so go take a look at our work and start building on it yourself. Watch this space for future group Wikipedia editing days as well.

Thank you to

Fran – Wikipedia trainer

Nonki – collections researcher

Lydia & Alya – openers

Aislinn – coordinator

Marina – collections coordinator

+ all our new Wikimedians!