Wikipedia:WikiWomen's History Month/Simmons College

What?
Simmons College GSLIS (with the help of SCoSAA) will be hosting a Wikipedia workshop for women's history for members of the GSLIS community and local Boston-area Wikimedians on the evening of Tuesday, March 27.

This event is being held in conjunction with the global WikiWomen's History Month initiative. Come for a practical introduction to editing Wikipedia—and expect to get your hands dirty writing an actual article! In addition, Wikimedians of any level are invited to help work on women's history content with us, and to help the newbies. Bring a laptop if you can, any ideas for articles, and a willingness to get involved. While we have the room from 4:30 to 8:30, feel free to come for as much or as little as you can, at any point. The event is being held in seminar room W205. That's in the Main Campus Building—the one with the pointy thing (pictured above) on top. Wikipedians of any gender and experience level are welcome. There will be free pizza and drinks provided by the Wikimedia New York City chapter!

The event will be led by Dominic McDevitt-Parks, a fellow GSLIS student and experienced Wikipedian who currently serves as the Wikipedian in Residence at the National Archives.

Why?
Wikipedia's editor base has a large gender gap. A reported by the New York Times last year, over 85% of editors are male! In response, the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director, Sue Gardner, blogged about how to get more women involved, and some scholars have encouraged women to become editors and for all editors to improve women's history articles. WikiWomen's History Month workshops are a fun way to introduce more women to Wikipedia editing, and to help increase the coverage of underrepresented topics.

GSLIS is ideally situated for such an event both because of the prevalence of educated and motivated women in the GSLIS community and because Wikipedia savvy is becoming increasingly important to information professionals of all types.

Yes

 * 1) Dominic·t 07:56, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * 2) – GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:17, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * 3) I'll be there. I'm very interested in collaborations with libraries - I help provide articles to other Wikipedia editors via the resource exchange. By the way, you may want to post at the (small) Boston Wikipedia meetup group. GabrielF (talk) 02:39, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * 4) Sounds awesome.  Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 21:38, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * 5) Looking forward to doing this before my class starts at 6PM! - Hannah W.
 * 6) I should be there by 6:30.  I've posted the event to the Boston Wikipedia meetup group's page  here. Emw (talk) 00:29, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * 7) I'll be there until 7 or so! Danielle Geller (talk) 12:15, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Maybe

 * 1) I'll try to stop by! Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * 2) Will try to come as well! -Darouet (talk) 13:41, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

No

 * 1) If men are invited to participate (i.e. are you looking for this to be a perdominantly women's event or not?)   S ven M anguard   Wha?  19:09, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Everyone is welcome! (I'll add a note specifically about any gender, in case it was unclear.) I expect the Wikipedians will be predominantly male, as at most events, and the students will be predominantly female, reflecting the student body (though it is co-ed). Dominic·t 01:43, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Huzzah! (for context, my first post and Dominic's response were in the Maybe section)  S ven M anguard   Wha?  03:16, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I decided against it.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  05:22, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) Wish I could, but won't be in town that day.  – SJ +  16:42, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Outcomes
We had 11 (by my count) total attendees, including 3 newbies, and a peak of 8. We created or de-stubified 8 new articles. This includes one new article created by a brand-new editor and a GSLIS student, Danielle Geller. I tried to list our accomplishments below by going through attendees' user contributions. Great work! Dominic·t 09:32, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Achievements
 * Eleanor Ragsdale (Danielle Geller)
 * Angela Byron (GorillaWarfare)
 * Patricia Buckley Ebrey (Sven Manguard)
 * Gloria Escoffery (Emw)
 * Ángela Auad (Calliopejen1)
 * Petrona Eyle (Calliopejen1),
 * Madeline Heineman Berger (Dominic)
 * Valerie Aurora (User:Antony-22)
 * Various copyediting by Cryptic C62
 * First edit by Hannah! (Hwweddle)
 * 3 pizzas consumed
 * Much nerdy merriment had
 * No one took pictures :-(