In an effort to combat systemic bias as it manifests in online archives, Troy High School of the Fullerton Joint Union School District organized an Edit-a-Thon event in the Pollak Library, where students are taught how to improve existing Wikipedia articles and create new ones.
The event had an overall three-step process, beginning with a detailed slide presentation by Troy High School student Lakshya Gupta, covering how to edit Wikipedia and providing tips on how to write as well as evaluate sources.
“I wanted to be able to give a presentation to people who are interested in editing Wikipedia to show them that it’s not as difficult as it sounds,” Gupta said. “Really, everyone can do this to make a change in their communities.”
The presentation was followed by hands-on group editing, where everyone worked collaboratively to make new articles and improve existing ones. The last step was to log any articles which had been improved and/or created.
The audience was guided through various how-to slides, each showcasing different steps of the editing process. Examples of articles that were edited were “stubs,” including WikiProject Africa, Asia and South America.
A stub, in the context of Wikipedia articles, is an incomplete encyclopedia article that contains only a few sentences or basic facts, leaving room for future expansion.
The event being offered to high school students, as well as Cal State Fullerton students, was an opportunity to bring a new sector of volunteer-based work not just to CSUF, but the Fullerton community as a whole.
“I saw there were so many workshops and meetups on the calendar for Wikipedia in other regions of the world and of California,” Gupta said. “I was thinking Southern California is very underrepresented here and especially Fullerton.”
CSUF staff also volunteered during the event, giving further context to things like authoritative sources, primary sources and other resources offered in the Pollak Library.
“Since I’m in Troy (High School) and Cal State Fullerton is very close by and has so many resources, I thought this would be the ideal venue for the event,” Gupta said.
Throughout the event, there was an emphasis put on how the work being done for Wikipedia is primarily volunteerbased.
“They tend to think we’re paid,” said Josh Lim, co-organizer of the Wikimedians of Los Angeles User Group. “I have not been paid a single cent for my work of Wikipedia.”
He goes on to express how he’d be very wealthy by now had he been paid for the work he has contributed and that having events like these shows that there is a human face behind Wikipedia.
“Wikipedia is written by a diverse group of people whose sole intention is to share and work on and build the sum of all human knowledge,” Lim said.
The theme of this Edit-A-Thon event was “fighting systemic bias against women and underrepresented countries.”
“It resonates with me a lot. It’s something I care about,” said third-year transfer student Lily Bo. “I’m a sociology major, so that’s right now all I’m studying; systemic injustice and fighting back in little ways and through information is important to me.”
Eventgoers highlighted how unheard perspectives in underrepresented communities manifest due to them not having access to the right tools or resources. Wikipedia has historically had systemic bias towards the communities due to an underrepresentation of people of color within its volunteer editor base.
“I’m Filipino, I’m brown. I just happen to represent a country that we punch above our weight on English Wikipedia,” Lim said. “We’re still underrepresented relative to wealthy, white middle-class men.”