GLAM/Newsletter/September 2020/Contents/USA report
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Virtual events MetFashion, 19SuffrageStories, WikiCari Festival and more
MetFashion 2020
The Metropolitan Museum of Art held a virtual wiki editing meetup, MetFashion 2020 using a video broadcast across multiple social media platforms. Wikimedians Richard Knipel (Wikimedian in Residence and Wikimedia NYC) and Andrew Lih (Wikimedia Strategist) anchored the presentation and training, with Met Museum staff members Jennie Choi (general manager of collection information) and Maria Kessler (head of digital partnerships). The event was held to coincide with the opening of the exhibit "About Time: Fashion and Duration" that opens at the end of October. As opposed to using Zoom or other video conferencing systems, the video live stream used StreamYard, a service that sends a broadcast video feed to multiple social media platforms at once. Viewers could watch the roundtable of hosts on their system of choice (Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter/Periscope) and respond and comment in real-time using those platforms. The hosts could then bring up specific comments and questions on-screen to respond to them.
The show also had presentations from Jessica Regan, The Met's associate curator specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fashion, talking about the exhibit's creation and Wikipedia editor Sara Clugage, who described emerging fashion topics in Wikipedia such as cottagecore. After a short training session on how to read and dissect Wikipedia articles, four core Wikipedia policies were introduced (NPOV. NOR, RS, V) and a demonstration of adding citations was given. Participants were then free to start editing and improving articles right away.
The broadcast started with a large spike of more than 600 simultaneous viewers, with the edit-a-thon/meetup benefitting from being on the front page of the Met Museum's web site, and a week's worth of publicity on its Facebook and Youtube accounts. The first hour saw a steady number of more than 300 viewers, and enough participants that the Outreach Dashboard to track the edits seemed to have crashed under the weight of users. (It would later recover.) The tally of total users across the platforms a few days later saw some impressive viewer numbers of the three hour broadcast:
After the first hour of introduction and training, the panel took questions and demonstrated some solutions including improving a new biography article, introducing the basics of Wikidata, showing how basic SPARQL queries work, and interacting with knowledge graphs produced by Wikidata Query.
Wikipedia articles improved included "About Time" fashion designers such as Iris van Herpen, Junya Watanabe, and Yohji Yamamoto in English, as well as the translation of Jacques Griffe into German. Entirely new articles on general fashion topics included the baati Somali garment, the cowk neck, and the Lo Lifes Brooklyn subculture.
Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative
In August the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative (AWHI) hosted 9 public facing edit-a-thons about American women's history!
We collaborated with the National Archives and the Library of Congress to host a month-long editing campaign for the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Our AWHI curators helped build our worklist and the social media presence of the overarching campaign(#19SuffrageStories) assisted in getting the word out. Our 19th Amendment campaign resulted in 8 mini edit-a-thons!
Also in August, the AWHI along with the Smithsonian Institution Archives, hosted our second Women in Science edit-a-thon. The worklist for the Women in Science events draw from notable women who have conducted research, worked at, or volunteered within the Smithsonian. This list, The Funk List, has over 400 names of women who needed to be added to Wikipedia for their numerous discoveries, innovations, and contributions to the field of science.
Wikimedia DC has been a great supporter of Wikimedia events at the Smithsonian, and especially the AWHI. They helped to support both of our events / campaigns in August.
All 9 of these edit-a-thons are scaled down versions of longer, in-person edit-a-thons. They generally last only 2 hours, and introduce Wikipedia key concepts via a slideshow tutorial, a screenshare demonstration about how to perform basic editing tasks, and answering questions from new editors. We're calling these micro-events and they've been successful in getting new editors to have a basic understanding of Wikipedia and we have seen repeat attendance and engagement from these events. We plan to continue this model and refine it we continue to host more virtual events into 2021.
Upcoming, the AWHI and Wikimedia DC are hosting a Women in Finance virtual edit-a-thon on Thursday, October 29th from 1:00-3:00 EST. Please join us by registering via the Eventbrite!
San Diego/September 2020 Wiknic
San Diego Wikimedians User Group held a wiknic, San Diego/September 2020 Wiknic
American Archive of Public Broadcasting Constitution Day Edit-a-thon
American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) and Wikimedia DC held a workshop, American Archive of Public Broadcasting: Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon Series 2020
PACSCL American Civil Rights and Abolitionist History
PACSCL members held a workshop about adding finding aids to their collections, Meetup/Philadelphia
Philadelphia WikiSalon
Mary Mark Ockerbloom held a workshop, WikiSalon 2020-09-19
WikiCari Festival
Wikimedians of the Caribbean User Group, AfroCROWD, and the NewsOnWiki Initiative, held day long workshops and panel discussions, Wikimedians of the Caribbean User Group/WikiCari Festival
The Wikimedians of the Caribbean User Group launched its first Wiki Caribbean Festival this September 19th in response to the shutdown of carnival and parade celebrations in the wake of the COVID-19.
The end of Summer is normally filled with festivals celebrating the Caribbean community and its diaspora. This year, carnivals like the West Indian Day Parade held every Labor Day in New York City in the US, and others in cities like Toronto in Canada and in the Caribbean itself, were awash as countries continue to struggle with the coronavirus.
This disappointing turn of events gave birth to the idea of a Wiki Caribbean community celebration online by the still relatively new Wikimedia User Group, Wikimedians of the Caribbean. The Wikimedians of the Caribbean User Group is a Wikimedia user group for the peoples of the Caribbean and the Caribbean Diaspora, bringing together cultures and languages, and also the communities with their diasporas. Started at WikiConference North America in 2018, it became a Wikimedia user group the following Spring.
Streamed by partners Wikipedia Weekly hosted by Andrew Lih and Richard Knipel, the event was a Wikimedia community celebration of Caribbean cultures, colours, creeds & ideas. Throughout the day, the celebration highlighted various composite parts of the Caribbean experience including food, literature, folklore, and the visual and performing arts. Invited guests included Wiki Cari’s lead organizer, Sherry Antoine, and core leaders Ian Ramjohn and Brandon Sullivan. Joining also was key special guest, Trinidadian artist, activist and scholar, Rubadiari Victor. Stopping by were Joël Letang of the Wikimedia Foundation who was born in Curaçao and Medrad Pourzarki also of the Foundation’s Strategic Design Group. Pete Forsyth of NewsonWiki also dropped by to talk about the Wiki project's campaign regarding Caribbean focused newspapers. Joël lent some words in the Papiamentu, spoken in Curaçao. Alice Baker, founder of AfroCROWD offered a message in Haitian Kreyol and Cuban Wikipedian Ivonne Gonzalez, leader of Noircir Wikipedia, delivered a message in Spanish.
Wikimedians of the Caribbean is in the midst of a campaign to hold 20 Wiki related events in the run up to and during Wikipedia’s 20th anniversay year to celebrate the milestone. The festival marks the halfway point. Click here to join the group’s mailing list and learn more about the group. you can click here to check out footage from the festival via Wikipedia Weekly on Wikimedia Commons.
