Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne/UOM edit a thon/Sept 2017

ResearcHERs Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
This was a wikipedia event held at the University of Melbourne, in 25th of August 2017. The event was inclusive, opened to all staff students and members of the public. The event was organised by the ResearcHERs group, and was formally part of Research@library week, being the final event of the week.

The Aims of the Event
The were fundamentally three aims of the event:
 * To redress the gender imbalance of the Wikipedia articles
 * To generally educate attendees about Wikipedia, and how it works.
 * To specifically give attendees the skills to create and edit articles

Organisers/Drivers
While originating as a library staff concept, staff from many different parts of the University were involved in organising and contributing to getting the event running. Some of thos involved were: Jennifer Warburton, Ruth McConchie, Bernard Lyons, Julia Kuehns (Scholarly Services) Dr Mary Tomsic (History) Alex Lum & Pru Mitchell (Wikipedia) Tyne Sumner (Resarch/English lit) Helen Morgan  (Culture and Communication) Hannah McCann (Gender Studies) Nikki Henningham (Academic Services) Kate Hodgetts (Archives)

The Event Itself
Schedule for the day consisted of a miz of training sessions, and opportunities for attendees to get hands on and create articles for wikipedia.


 * 9am - Launch by Provost, Margaret Sheil
 * 11.30am - Guided Wikipedia Q & A
 * 12.30 - Lunch
 * 1.30pm - Introductory Wikipedia workshop
 * 1.30pm - Wikidata Workshop
 * 2.45pm - Wikidate Q & A
 * 3.45pm - Wrap session
 * 4pm - Drinks

Results
Overall, the event was well attended. Pru Mitchell gave a great talk, and Pru, Alex and general people assisted with helping attendees work on Wikipedia. There was a great atmosphere, people had a great spirit were all really enthused. People were helping each other and a lot was achieved.

Achievments

 * Created 32 female biography articles,
 * Trained 40 people how to create Wikipedia pages
 * Fixed up 40 pages
 * 75 revisions
 * Created the University of Melbourne women category and added 115 women added to it.
 * 40 people attended Parkville
 * 6 people attended Southbank

Articles created on the day
Articles that were created on the day:

1. Mildred Barnard 2. Kathleen Funder 3. Jean Laby 4. Diane Lemaire 5. Philippa Maddern 6. Lorna McConchie 7. Dulcie Hollyock 8. Constance (Connie) Frazer 9. Alice Hoy 10. Kiffy Rubbo 11. Hilda Bastian 12. Jocelyn Hyslop

The Future
The edit-a-thon was a springboard for the creation of a University of Melbourne Wikipedia Community of Practice. A recent decision by the edit-a-thon organisers was to call the Community the UOM Wiki Agenda (UMWA) University of Melbourne Wikipedians addressing the Diversity Gap The initial meeting for this body will be held late October, 2017.