Adding underrepresented scientists to Wikipedia — and gaining skills along the way

The recent movie Oppenheimer brought recent attention to the Manhattan Project. For Lone Star College – Kingwood sophomore Connor McAdams, an important part of learning more about the Manhattan Project is learning about the traditionally underrepresented scientists who also contributed. “People often acknowledge scientists such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, but other scientists who worked on … Continued

Adding Claibourne Smith’s Wikipedia article: “like it was a piece of art that I kept looking at”

Mahmoud “Mody” Hassan is a freshman at Rutgers University Newark. It was his first term of college, and he had just started at Rutgers after being born and raised in Egypt. So there were a lot of changes in his life when he showed up to Dr. Laura Porterfield’s class on “Education and Social Change … Continued

Clovis students add biographies of diverse people in STEM

This fall, students in Melanie Sanwo’s Honors English class at Clovis Community College came together with a common mission: Add biographies of diverse people in STEM to Wikipedia. The 12 students split in four groups to add four new biographies to Wikipedia: Steve Ramirez, Joseph Monroe, Juan G. Santiago, and James M. Jay. For the … Continued

Telling the story of an African American chemist

Chemist Harold B. Evans was one of a handful of African American scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. A photo of him has been included in the Wikipedia article on African-American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project for several years — but Wikipedia lacked his biography until student De’Narie Breeland created it this … Continued

Howard students improve representation of Black women in STEM on Wikipedia

This fall, Howard University professor Msia Clark taught a course on “Black Women and Pop Culture”, which focuses on Black women’s representations. So what could be more perfect than to ask her students to improve the representation of Black women on Wikipedia, the website the world visits when it wants to know more about topics? … Continued

Join us for “Wikipedia in a generative AI world”

Update: watch the recording. Everyone’s been talking about generative AI like ChatGPT and how it will change our lives. But have you considered its impact on Wikipedia? We’re pleased to announce the next edition of the Wiki Education Speaker Series, regular Zoom-based conversations where we bring together experts in Wikimedia and open knowledge for lively discussions … Continued

Diversifying Wikipedia’s U.S. editors

The vision of the Wikimedia universe is to collect “the sum of all human knowledge”. But that’s hard to do when, as the latest Wikimedia Community Insights Report shows, your core community of contributors fails to reflect the spectrum of human diversity. In particular, the report concludes that “In the United States, Black and Hispanic contributors continued … Continued

Telling the story of an African American engineer on Wikipedia

Eugene M. DeLoatch founded the School of Engineering at Morgan State University, Maryland’s only HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). He spent his career educating African American engineers. But, like many STEM figures from historically marginalized communities, DeLoatch lacked a Wikipedia article — until Kimberly Ivy created it. DeLoatch’s life story is one of championing … Continued