Create 2024/Women and BIPOC Scientists in North America: Submissions:2021/Editing seems too hard

This submission has been accepted for WikiConference North America 2024.

When we hear about a scientist, we often think of an old white man. The truth is that in recent years, the scientific community has diversified, and we now see women and members of the BIPOC community performing cutting-edge research, receiving awards and mentoring students. Unfortunately, their representation in Wikipedia is still lacking. According to a recently published research paper (Lemieux, Zhang & Tripody, 2023), despite the intense work done by multiple groups to improve the biographies of women, the profiles of female and BIPOC academics face a greater uphill battle when it comes to getting their pages to stick in Wikipedia, because even those with high online presence scores are still likely to be perceived as nonnotable subjects. Following the Indianapolis motto “Cross-roads of America”, the Wiki-Conference North America seems like a great opportunity where English, Spanish and French speaking wikimedians will cross paths and could edit and translate biographies of women and BIPOC scientists in North America, thus reducing the gender and racial inequality in Wikipedia. The proposed edit-a-thon could be held in a time frame of two hours with both an in-person and remote session. The attendees will be provided with a list of biographies they can choose from either to edit or translate. Including the voices of such marginalized groups is critical to community innovation and the availability of free online knowledge. Hence, by carrying out the proposed event we will be working towards a more equitable and diverse Wikipedia, which will positively shape the public perception of who can be a scientist.