Populate the internet with issues, knowledge and content related to women's rights and our diverse realities, perspectives and interests. Contribute to a wiki.
Wikis are websites that allow for collaborative writing and editing. They are very useful platforms to create user-generated resources and knowledge. One of the most popular examples is Wikipedia. As a free online encyclopedia, it contains more than 3 million articles on a broad range of subjects since it began in 2001, and has sparked off many local wikipedia sites in other languages. Apart from Wikipedia, there are also many important encyclopedias by women, for women built using wikis.
Anyone can contribute to wiki-based encyclopedias, and add information or write articles about things that they know. Because of the open nature of its content building, knowledge is something that is collectively owned, reviewed, and disseminated.
Build feminist knowledge and contribute to these important repositories of information. Help make sure that documented living history does not neglect our perspectives and knowledge.
Take Back The Tech! Populate the internet with what you know.
1. Feminist-ing Wikipedia
- Go to wikipedia, and search for topics that you are familiar with.
- In particular, go through entries on violence against women, and add information about your country. For example, under the rape article, create a section on the rape situation in your country, adding links to statistics, debates, legislation etc. Or create a whole new stub about “rape in [your country]”. Don’t forget to cite and add references to what you add.
- You can change and add to any articles found in Wikipedia when you click on “edit this page”.
- It’s fairly user-friendly, although you might have to play around with the syntax (language) to familiarise yourself with it.
- Try it out by going through the tutorial.
- You can also create an account to better protect your privacy and gain access to various other functions
- Get together with a group of friends, and turn this into a mini project :)
2. Grow women's wikis
- There are many wiki-encyclopedias made by women, for women.
- It's important to help them grow, and keep them updated and richly diverse with our collective knowledge.
- Here are some that you can check out and get started with:
- Or you can start your own feminist wiki specific to your own country or language.
- Create a new wiki on wikia on any topic (e.g. violence against women [your country])
- If you're familiar with building sites and administering them, download Media Wiki and get started :)
Got stuck? Feeling excited and inspired? Leave a comment and let's start a discussion on playing with wikis and building feminist knowledge on the world wide web!
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