In celebration of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, the CSWS-initiated Fembot Collective had a busy and productive time at its second annual Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon held in the Ms. Magazine offices in Beverly Hills on March 11, 2016.
On Saturday, March 12, Fembot collaborated with the USC, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism for an “Un-Conference on Digital Tools for Civic Engagement” to introduce digital tools and create ways to harness, hack, and expand them for feminist scholarship and civic engagement. Those sessions laid the groundwork for the Fembot Collective’s textbook on Digital Tools for Civic Engagement, which will be collaboratively authored by the workshop’s participants.
The Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon was organized to contribute into Wikipedia figures, movements, organizations, and ideas historically marginalized because of gender, race, and sexuality. The Fembot Collective aims to make sure that the virtual world of free and accessible knowledge offers a gender inclusive history. At the Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, which included an address by Sarah Stierch, a former Wikipedian in Residence, Fembot and Ms. provided a learning environment on how to make effective, engaging entries and improve on existing content with robust citations, data, categories, infoboxes, etc.
This year’s edit-a-thon featured a special collaborative group focusing on writing the history of women’s athletics into Wikipedia. Here’s some of what the participants did, Wikipedia-wise:
- Lisa Sergio <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Sergio>, anti-Fascist radio commentator (created page)
- additions and edits on Suad Joseph <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suad_Joseph> page
- Hijas de Violencia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijas_de_Violencia> (improved)
- Code: Debugging the Gender Gap <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:_Debugging_the_Gender_Gap> (improved)
- Civil_Rights_Congress#Rosa_Lee_Ingram <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Congress#Rosa_Lee_Ingram> (added link)
- National Women’s Studies Association <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Women%27s_Studies_Association> (Stub)
- Jessica Hopper <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Hopper>
- Angie Beckwith <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie_Beckwith> (stub created)
- Arizona Wildcats women’s basketball <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Wildcats_women%27s_basketball> Edited Arizona Wildcats <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Wildcats> to include women’s basketball
- Raevyn Rogers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raevyn_Rogers>
- Rosa Lee Ingram <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Lee_Ingram> (created page)
- Katherine Spillar <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Spillar> (created stub)
- updated info for Feminist Media Studies <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_Media_Studies>
- Elizabeth Sackler <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Sackler> (added picture and content)
- Depression (mood) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_%28mood%29> added “Psychogeographical Depression” to “causes” (Cvetkovich 2012)
- Oregon State Beavers women’s basketball <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_State_Beavers_women%27s_basketball>
- Female comics creators <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_comics_creators> added lists of contemporary female comic and webcomic creators
- Hairstyles <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairstyle> (improved – edited narrow descriptions)
- List of Hairstyles <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hairstyles> (improved – edited or deleted racist and sexist descriptions)
- Artificial Hair Integrations <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_hair_integrations> (improved)
- Natural Hair Movement <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_hair_movement> (improved – edited widespread assumptions/stereotypes applied to the topic)
- Created Double Union <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Union> (stub)
Fembot began as the CSWS Gender, New Media, and Technology Research Interest Group more than five years ago, and leveraged that seed money to grow into an international collective focused on feminist media studies and digital humanities, supported primarily by funding and assistance from CSWS, the UO Libraries Digital Scholarship Center, and the UO School of Journalism and Communication.
