What’s an Edit-a-thon? 

It’s a community organized event focused on editing, updating, and adding articles on Wikipedia. Celebrate the International Day of Light by helping to reduce the gender gap in the 5th most visited website in the world and get the Women of Optics the pages they deserve. Raising the visibility of underrepresented people in science provides recognition of their contributions which can be inspirational to others as well as diversify the pool of scientific experts perceived by government, media and institutions. 

Did you know only 18% of the 1.6 million biographies in the English Wikipedia are about women?
The figure is lower for people tagged as scientists – 16% of almost 150,000 articles.

How will this virtual Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon work?

Grab your coffee, lunch, snack or glass of wine – whatever works for your timezone! Alice and Lia will get us started with an overview of why this work is important, instructions on how to begin and tips for making strong pages. Following that, it’s time to get to work. Alice, Lia and OSA staff will stay on the webinar until 13:00 working along side all of you, there to answer any questions that come up.

What do you need to do?

• Register for the session here. We will send additional information before the session.
• Register as a Wikipedia Editor here. 
• Log in to the Wiki-dashboard using your Wikipedia account so we can track all the contributions made during the event
• Check out this FAQ about contributing to Wikipedia

Meet the Trainers

Ying Lia Li, Royal Academy of Engineering Fellow at University College London

Dr. Ying Lia Li (Lia) is currently a Royal Academy of Engineering Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow working on optical inertial sensors for GPS-denied navigation. She ran the UCL Women in Physics Group between 2016-2019 and is now a member of the UCL Race Equality Steering Group. Inspired by her friend and colleague Dr. Jess Wade, Lia started editing Wikipedia two years ago. With help from Dr. Alice White, Lia has run multiple Wikithons at UCL aimed at increasing the representation of notable yet underrepresented scientists.

Alice White, Digital Editor & Wikimedian-in-Residence, Wellcome Trust

Dr. Alice White is a Digital Editor and Wikimedian-in-Residence at the Wellcome Trust; her work involves helping people to share their knowledge online. Before joining Wellcome, she did a PhD in the history of science and has also worked as a researcher and teacher. Alice has run several Wikipedia Edit-A-Thons including the OSA’s first Wiki Needs Women in Optics event at their annual meeting Frontiers in Optics in 2019.