Did you know that fewer than 20 percent of editors on Wikipedia identify as women, according to a recent survey? And that fewer than 18% of biographies on English Wikipedia are about women?
On Italian Wikipedia the percentage of biographies about women is just 15,6%. For this reason WikiDonne is co-organizing a Wiki edit-a-thon called WikiGap until mid April - naturally you can keep helping after that date, too!
You don't speak Italian or want to contribute to Wikipedia in a different language? Still consider joining the WikiGap edit-a-thon in English or your own language. You can also consider joining the initiative WikiLovesWomen, focusing on bridging two significant gaps on Wikimedia projects – women and Africa – both in terms of content about these subjects and in terms of participation by people from these groups.
How to join the WikiGap edit-a-thon
It is fairly simple. First, create an account on Wikipedia in your language and then you can start editing away with us! You can translate items or add them – please refer to the following list as inspiration, here you can find the names of lots of notable women in various fields who are not yet featured in Italian: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:WikiDonne/Liste_voci_mancanti
How to translate an item on Wikipedia
It took me some trial and error to understand how to translate successfully on Wikipedia from English to Italian – the process is actually really fast, but since the translation tool is a Beta feature there are still some minor hiccups.
If you want to translate a biography (or anything else) on Wikipedia, please follow the instructions below. I made this little how-to-guide to show you the basic steps. And remember, the community on Wikipedia and WikiDonne will help you if you are lost.
Once you are done and have published your translated biography on Wikipedia, remember two extra steps : )
You will click on “Discussion” on the Wikipedia page you just created. Then you will add a banner which is available as “Template” using the TEMPLATE option, you are looking for the one called “Tradotto da” (in Italian, you can search for the equivalent ‘translated from’ in your language). The banner tells the readers that the page is a translation. After that, you will add the banner of the WikiGap initiative, just copy paste the following text into the discussion - modify wikitext: {{WikiDonne/Eventi/Editathons/Templates/WDG-WikiGap 2020}}.
Here you can see how the banners look like in the discussion field of the Wiki page about Limor Fried I have just translated:
Enjoy and spread the word, we still have some time to go before the end of the Edit-a-Thon!