Education/News/March 2019/WikiGap brings editors to close WikiGap

WikiGap brings editors to close WikiGap and open Wiki Pathshala

Summary: The event was originated in March 2017, a sister edit-a-thon in four languages between the Swedish embassy in New Delhi and Stockholm was organized for International Women's day. This year, I with the help of local sponsor, Wikimedia India, Swedish Embassy, The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Wikimedia Sverige, all came together to organise WikiGap 2019 Kolkata, India workshop, while an edit-a-thon have started from 8th March 2019 till 8th April 2019, to work together to close Wiki gap.

WikiGap 2019 workshop in Kolkata
Group photo of new editors and mentors after WikiGap Workshop and Edit-a-thon at Kolkata
Teaching participants on how to edit articles
Participants working on articles
Participant getting trained to how to add citation in a Wikipedia article
Participants before the refreshments break
Participants at the end of the workshop

WikiGap is an event during which people around the world gather to add more content to Wikipedia about women figures, experts and role models in various fields. Similar events have already been arranged in almost 60 countries worldwide to improve women’s representation on the internet.

Together, we want to bring about a more gender-equal internet – and a more gender-equal world. This is the second year WikiGap is being organized. The event invites broad and diverse participation, and allows for local adaptations to the overall theme of closing the gender gap and other gaps relevant for diversity on Wikipedia.

It was a wonderful moment, as we able to start the WikiGap onsite event with a good number of participation in Kolkata, India, the celebration was more as it also marks the first-ever WikiGap event in Kolkata, the workshop was to sensitize participants about Wikipedia and to enable them to use and contribute to the sum of human knowledge, as an Edit-a-thon were already started, the participants who were new have become "New editors". The event focused on writing new or expand articles on biographies of any Indian women which are of interest to the participants. This workshop was conducted to groom new contributors in Wikipedia spaces from India, especially capture the interest of students to volunteer for Wikimedia projects like WikiGap and help to close the gender gap.

The event show us the possibility to start a "Wiki Pathshala" (Wiki Club), first of it's kind in Kolkata, India, as I being the mentor and organiser felt the need of such workshops to groom new participants into a "New editor" and in a way passing the torch of knowledge and skills to others.

WikiGap event till date, 7 articles were created, 16 articles edited, 12 editors participated, 47.7K bytes added and 166 articles views.

One of the take away of the event was basically an eye-opener for me, to open a "Wiki Pathshala" (Wiki Club).

A look at the metrics of the event will show the achievement of the event.

Social Media channels or hashtags:#WikiGap2019Kolkata, #WikiGap2019