NOTE: Be sure to add your name to the Participants List on Wikipedia! You can also ask questions at the Project’s Meet-up’s Talk Page!
For better or worse, Wikipedia has become the first stop for information for many people.
With that in mind, the Ohio Center for the Book, in collaboration with the State Library of Ohio, is encouraging people to add information about Ohio women to Wikipedia during Women’s History Month 2022 to celebrate their contributions to the cultural and social life of our state and country. Our official online edit-a-thon will run from March 26 through April 2.
An edit-a-thon is an event to edit and improve articles on a specific topic or type of content. While the Ohio Women on Wikipedia edit-a-thon will run the last week of March into April, we’re encouraging everyone to take the weeks leading up to the official event as a time to familiarize themselves with the Wikipedia editing process and to gather information they want to add! Then, hit the ground running on March 26!
We invite you to share your progress and participation on social media using #OHWomenWiki22!
You can also add your Wikipedia account to our Ohio Women on Wikipedia 2022 dashboard to keep track of your edits and the edits of other participants!
I’ve never edited Wikipedia! No problem!
No worries! If you have not edited Wikipedia before, the list of tutorials and guides below provide step-by-step instructions to get you started.
- Create an Account
- Accounts can be created by clicking Create Account at the Wikipedia homepage at https://en.wikipedia.org.
- If you have an existing Wikipedia account, you are welcomed to use that for this project.
- Learn the Basics of Editing
- If you haven’t edited before, you are encouraged to work through at least one of the following resources to train yourself on “Wikipedia etiquette” and the process of content creation:
- https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/training/students (These training modules provide a good overview of all pertinent topics.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Adventure (“Learn to edit Wikipedia in under an hour! Come on a journey full of real skills, tips, helpers, rewards, and support.”)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikipedia:_The_Missing_Manual
- If you haven’t edited before, you are encouraged to work through at least one of the following resources to train yourself on “Wikipedia etiquette” and the process of content creation:
- Additional Resources
- A Beginner’s Guide to Wikipedia (creating an account, first article, etc.)
- An Introduction to Wikipedia (introduction to using both the source code editing and the (easier!) visual editor)
- Your First Article including a link to the Article Wizard
How can I find articles that need edited?
With over 6 million articles on Wikipedia, asking “How do I find articles to edit?” is a natural question!
One option is to simply search for the women about whom you’d like to add information and see if they have an article or if they need one created.*
You can also just add “External Links” to an article linking to online resources about your subject at libraries, archives, or museums! That’s an easy way to get started!
Below we’ve listed a selection of where articles on Ohio women can be found on Wikipedia:
- Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame list on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Women%27s_Hall_of_Fame
- The list of inductees into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame from 1978 through 2011.
- Click on them to find out which ones need more information in their articles.
- Categories
- Women in Ohio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Women_in_Ohio
- People from Ohio by occupation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Ohio_by_occupation (includes both women and men)
- Writers from Ohio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers_from_Ohio
- Novelists from Ohio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Novelists_from_Ohio
- Songwriters from Ohio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Songwriters_from_Ohio
- There are numerous categories for people from various Ohio cities like
- Ohio Portal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Ohio (numerous lists, articles, etc.)
How can I find information to add to Wikipedia?
We’ve got you covered there, too! Check out some sources below…
- Don’t forget to visit your local library to use print resources including local history information!
- You can also use your library’s online resources from anywhere!
- Consider using resources available through the Ohio Digital Network on the Digital Public Library of America!
- Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame resource at The Ohio History Connection: https://resources.ohiohistory.org/womenshof/
- 2021 Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony (video): https://resources.ohiohistory.org/womenshof/
- Search for information about your subject on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/
- Search for information about your subject on Hathi Trust: https://www.hathitrust.org/
* If you’re thinking of creating a new article, follow Wikipedia’s “Notability” guidelines. The “Cliffs Notes” version is “People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject. This is one reason why adding information to existing articles is sometimes easier than creating an entirely new article… at least at first!