UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Only 17.7% of Wikipedia biographies written in English are about women, and between 84% and 91% of the platform’s editors are male, according to a 2018 Nature article. A group of eight students in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) recently set out to narrow this gender gap on the world’s fifth most popular website by hosting a Wiki edit-a-thon to increase visibility for one of the college’s most prominent female faculty members.
To commemorate Women’s History Month in March, the Women in IST (WIST) student organization invited fellow students and Penn State community members to update the Wikipedia page for Mary Beth Rosson, professor and director of graduate programs at IST.
“I personally was motivated to take on this project because I wanted to bring attention to the gender gap in Wikipedia pages and their coverage of women’s topics,” said Amber McCullough, a member of WIST who coordinated and led the edit-a-thon. “90 percent of contributors are men, so this creates for poor coverage on women’s topics and results in a difference in content on women’s pages compared to men.”
McCullough explained that there are limited pages for women in technology, further motivating WIST to rise to the challenge.
At the three-hour event, participants learned how to edit a Wikipedia page and were assigned sections of Rosson’s page to review and update. Participants focused on adding additional information about her education, research, publications, awards and honors.
The effort was no small feat, according to McCullough. Since anyone in the world can contribute to Wikipedia, there are strict rules, rigid verification processes and the chance that content could ultimately be edited or deleted by others. But the WIST members were up for the challenge.
“Our overall goal was to revamp Dr. Rosson’s page and update her information to include more of her more recent endeavors,” said Jenna Fitzpatrick, president of WIST. “It was a way for us to showcase women’s accomplishments in IST, and that's what WIST is all about.”
The idea for the edit-a-thon came from Chris Gamrat, senior instructional design at IST, after he listened to a radio news story about the challenges of creation and maintenance of women’s biographies on Wikipedia.
“It got me to thinking that perhaps we could consider a way to make a space, either curricular or extracurricular, to help contribute to this cause,” said Gamrat.
Gamrat’s idea came to life, with the help of Rita Griffith, assistant director of professional development at IST who serves as WIST’s adviser; Carmen Cole, IST research consultant and the college’s liaison with University Libraries; and Lily Weaver Murray, library staff assistant at University Libraries who used her past experience with leading edit-a-thons to help WIST with the logistics and information needed for their successful event.
The organizers hope the inaugural edit-a-thon will lead to similar events in the future as they aim to increase the presence of Wikipedia biographies on women from a variety of industries.
“There was a sense of accomplishment after the event, and I believe the students enjoyed the effort,” concluded Cole. “This event was a ‘proof of concept’ for future edit-a-thons and with how units across the University can work together to enact change.”