Four years of Women Write Wiki

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As many Wikipedians will tell you, it is the discovery of some key piece of missing content that first spurs them into action. For Anna Kerr, it was a search for information on legendary independent feminist publishers Spinifex Press.

“I was looking for information about them ahead of attending their 25th anniversary celebrations,” she said. “And there was no Wikipedia entry! I thought that was weird and it just occurred to me we should do something about it.”

This moment led her to found one of Australia’s longest running Wikipedia editing groups.

Anna, who is the Principal Solicitor of Feminist Legal Clinic in Sydney joined forces with technologist and general polymath Spider Redgold to apply for a grant to found a women’s Wikipedia editing group. Supported by Create NSW through the NSW Writers Centre (now Writing NSW), in 2017, the Women Write Wiki (WWW) group was born. The group’s title is a feminist reworking or play on the ‘World Wide Web’.

The group meets twice per month at The Women’s Library in Newtown, an inner west suburb of Sydney to write about Australian women authors represented in the library. Created in 1992, the library’s collection was kickstarted by community donations to large tea chests placed in locations around Sydney that eventually found a home at Newtown Library.

In March 2021, the group celebrated four years of editing, activism and friendship, during which they estimate they’ve created over 300 new pages on Australian and New Zealand women.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Spinifex Press and its founders Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne were some of the first pages the WWW group worked on. At the time, just 16% of articles on English Wikipedia were about women. Their efforts form part of growing international movements, such as Women in Red and Art+Feminism, whose work to increase the visibility and representation of women on Wikimedia platforms has seen the number grow to nearly 19% as of March 2021.[1]

Wikipedian Ann Reynolds

“Wikipedia just mirrors the battles we have in general society,” Anna says.

The group has produced some of Australia’s most prolific Wikipedians, such as Ann Reynolds and Margaret Donald who walked through the doors of the library and have been stalwarts of the group ever since.

“I got hooked and eventually I got better at it,” Ann said. “I’ve now written 247 Wikipedia pages. And that’s just the women, then there’s women’s prizes and organisations.”

Anna and Ann both attribute the group's success to the collective nature of their editing efforts. As many women editors describe, this kind of support is essential in making the case for the notability of women on Wikipedia.

“If you post something or have an issue, you can send it around and then several people would jump in and support you,” Anna said. “It’s just so much better working together. As an individual woman you could become quite demoralised.”

“Yes!" Ann agrees. "We turn up, have a chat and there’s moral support."

Women Write Women meet on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month at The Women’s Library, Newtown. You can follow them here or on Facebook.

References

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