Customized Wikipedia & Wikidata training courses

I entered the course with only the most basic idea of what Wikidata was and no experience editing it. Through the course I became familiar with how to use the platform, but more importantly I learned about the robust community of editors and how to seek out help when I need it.

I had previously tried playing around with Wikidata, but found that I needed guidance for how to get started. I found the Wikidata course immensely helpful in providing the basics for navigating the system and adding data. Will, my instructor, was very helpful in answering questions and generally getting us started, as well as answering my individual questions re: querying and setting up new records.

Wikipedia is the most read information source in English. This could be another way to reach out to the public and share the information that we hold. As educational institutions, sharing this should be our primary goal. Plus, as you are able to link your institution to the article through talking about where an archive or artworks are held, there is the potential that it will direct people to your other online or in person content.

On Wikipedia you have the opportunity to bring an expert’s perspective to something that might not have been treated expertly. Everyone who finds Wikipedia to be a good resource ought to contribute in one way or another, to the ongoing value of Wikipedia. One way of doing that, of course, is to act as an editor.

The class was incredibly formative and well structured. Without the guidance of Zoom classes, I would not have known where to begin in my research, or how to evoke the tone and structure of a high quality Wikipedia article. Wiki Education also gave me insight into how articles gain readership, are internally linked to each other, and evaluated. The class gave me an insider’s perspective on all of the complex details that make Wikipedia so great!

The weekly meetings and homework assignments were a perfect format to learn the particular skills of editing Wikipedia that I might have never learned on my own. Frankly, Wikipedia is overwhelming, and Will broke things down so that I could learn the ropes in manageable steps.

Wiki Education’s professional development courses are valuable in that participants not only learn about and apply technical knowledge in Wikimedia projects, we’re also provided an opportunity to network with others across professional sectors. In this way, taking a course from Wiki Education is a little bit like attending a series of workshops at an interdisciplinary professional conference — a unique opportunity for sure. In fact, hearing from other participants in the class about their own experience with particular tools or uses of Wikidata became one of the most helpful aspects of the Institute.

As someone who is both BIPOC and queer and thus belongs to multiple marginalised communities, it is important for me to learn the skills to identify the absences/silences/erasures in knowledge creation/infrastructure and to also actively find tools to fill those gaps with a vision to contribute to epistemic equity and inclusivity. I think Wikidata is one of those powerful tools, and I wanted to learn more about it.