Wikipedia:Meetup/Oakland/Oakland Public Library May 2021

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The African American Museum & Library at Oakland

Join the African American Museum & Library at Oakland and the Oakland History Center for a virtual Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon focusing on the Black Campus Movement in the Bay Area. Participants will create and edit Wikipedia pages for the Afro-American Association and related topics highlighting the contributions of African Americans to college activism and the Black Power and Black Arts movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Participants are also welcome to work on topics of their choice in Oakland history and African American history. Beginners are especially invited! An experienced Wikipedia editor will provide training and support for new editors.

Event information[edit]

  • Date: Wednesday May 26, 2021
  • Time: 4 - 7 pm PT
  • Location: Online on Zoom, hosted by the Oakland Public Library
  • Registration: Free! Register to get the Zoom link. All are welcome.

Schedule:

  • 4 - 4:15 pm - Welcome + introductions
  • 4:15 - 5 pm - Guided explanation of how to edit Wikipedia for newcomers, with examples (experienced editors can hang out and edit during this time - we can make a breakout room for you)
  • 5 - 7 pm - Open editing time, with breakout rooms for working together on activities of interest

Resources[edit]

Articles

Books available for digital checkout from AAMLO and OHC

Archives and collections with relevant materials

Films and audio recordings

Ground rules[edit]

See the Wikimedia friendly space policy for behavior expectations.

Participants[edit]

RSVP

Optional: Add yourself to the event dashboard to help us track edits and other contributions from this event.

Optional: If you have a Wikipedia account, you can also sign your name by editing this section and typing four tildes ("~~~~") in the list below. If you don't have an account, just write your name below (though it is recommended that you create a user account in advance of the event - create one here!).

Suggestions for articles to work on[edit]

Improve:

Create articles:

Evaluate whether there are enough sources to create standalone articles (or just expand coverage of these topics in existing articles):

  • San Francisco State BSU
  • Donald Warden
  • Benny Stewart, BSU chair, SFSU

Expand related articles:

You can also explore and add to articles on related topics on the Oakland Wiki, which is a local project separate from Wikipedia. It welcomes both formal and informal contributions, including memories and original research.

Outcomes[edit]

Resources for editing[edit]

New editors: if you'd like to practice some getting-started steps on your own, see the Interactive Editing Tutorial or Beginners' Guide to Wikipedia (account creation, article editing).

Page expansion and adding references[edit]

To get started:

  1. Check out the articles in the "Suggestions" list above, especially the articles noted as needing content expansion or additional references. Skim a few, and pick one that sounds interesting to you! Or pick a totally different article - up to you.
  2. Read the article carefully. Note down any areas that seem like they need improvement, such as awkward sentences or gaps in the story.
  3. Pick a sentence that doesn't have a citation. Look up the information to see if you can find an article in a reliable secondary source (newspaper, magazine, book, scholarly journal, etc) that contains the information in the sentence. If you can't, pick another sentence.
  4. Once you've found a reference you can add, edit the article and use the "cite" button to add it.

To add new content, the easiest process is similar:

  1. Find a good secondary source that contains information about the subject that is missing from the Wikipedia article.
  2. Edit the article. Write a sentence that puts the information in your own words or quotes the source. Add the source as a reference.
  3. Repeat! That's the whole process of adding content to Wikipedia. :D

Drafting a new article[edit]

To create a new article, it's best to start in "draft" mode. It's ok if you don't know much about the topic before you begin - you'll learn as you go along. Multiple people can work on a draft together.

To get started:

  1. In the "Suggestions" list above, click one of the "Draft" links. If it hasn't been started yet, it's in red.
  2. A good way to begin is to draft an outline: what are the titles of the sections going to be? You can look up and read a few references to get an overview of major themes or sections to cover.
  3. Save your edits frequently! It's ok to save when it's just a draft outline with a few notes.
  4. Your collaborators and you can each pick a section to work on, using the "Page expansion and adding references" method above.
  5. When a draft has a good intro paragraph, a few paragraphs with at least summary coverage of major themes, and sources for almost all statements, we can review together and decide whether it's ready to convert to a live article.

Inbound linking[edit]

The goal here is to help weave the web of Wikipedia: link to articles from other relevant articles!

To get started:

  1. Check out the articles in the "Suggestions" list above and pick one that you find interesting, or find another article that you're interested in.
  2. Read your chosen article and look at the articles it links to. Should any of those articles link back to this one?
  3. Search for the subject within Wikipedia. Do any of the articles in the search results mention the subject by name but don't link to it?
  4. Edit those articles to link to the article!

Copy editing[edit]

Wikipedia has a style guide including punctuation and formatting standards (Wikipedia:Manual of Style) and content guidelines for voice and tone (Wikipedia:Neutral point of view), and you can help fix articles to match them.

  1. Check out the articles in the "Suggestions" list above and pick one that you find interesting, or find another article that you're interested in.
  2. Read it carefully. Are there any issues with it? Are the sentences too long? Do the paragraphs need consolidating or splitting? Does it need fixing to match the style guide? Does it have a promotional tone that could be adjusted?
  3. Edit the article to improve it! Refer to the Manual of Style and Neutral Point of View documents to use Wikipedia best practices.

More Wikipedia events![edit]

You can check out AfroCrowd and Black Lunch Table for additional suggestions, resources, and upcoming virtual Wikipedia editing events centered on Black history and artists, run by independent groups of editors.

Citations and style guidelines[edit]

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