Join an online edit-a-thon to contribute climate change information to Wikipedia

Sponsored content: From 24 November to 1 December, Wiki4Climate is inviting climate experts, particularly from the Global South, to get involved in editing Wikipedia

(Pic: Future Climate for Africa)

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An online ‘edit-a-thon’ event will run from 24 November to 1 December and is open to anyone with an interest in climate change and a desire to improve Wikipedia content or share information.

Over the last 12 months there have been 98.3 million pageviews of climate change articles on Wikipedia articles.

That’s over 267,000 pageviews per day. Yet many of those in the climate change community – practitioners, researchers, communicators, community organisers – are not maximising this powerful tool to make climate change information more freely available, more robust and more representative of the diversity of local-level impacts and responses.

“We need local knowledge from the ground integrated into Wikipedia. Telling our own stories is only something we can do”, said Rudolph Ampofo at the webinar last week. Rudolph is partnerships manager for sub-Saharan Africa at the Wikimedia Foundation, where he develops partnerships to increase awareness, reach and access to Wikipedia on the continent. In 2015, only about 20% of Wikipedia editors were from the Global South, and in a 2018 survey as little as 8.8% of contributors were women across 12 language versions of Wikipedia.

Why an edit-a-thon?

Wiki4Climate aims to mobilise a community of climate change professionals (researchers, practitioners and communicators), climate and community organisers, and existing Wikipedia editors and volunteers to edit and update climate change articles on Wikipedia. The event will take place over the same period as the UNFCCC’s Climate Dialogues where parties can showcase their progress and achievements on climate action in 2020.

Edit-a-thons are where a group of people come together, in person or virtually, to edit Wikipedia on a particular topic and it can be a good way to improve the quality of information and encourage people to become contributors.

The event has four specific goals:

  1. To enhance climate change related content on Wikipedia, particularly related to the Global South,
  2. To increase awareness on the value of contributing to the platform,
  3. To enhance the confidence and skills of climate change professionals to edit Wikipedia, and
  4. To build a community of climate change editors, particularly women and editors from the Global South.

Date and time: Starting on 24 November 11:00 (GMT) until 1 December 2020 12:30 (GMT).

Location: Online.

Sign up here

Note: You are free to commit according to the time you have available and do not need to attend for the whole week. For example, you can choose to edit for ten minutes a day, or every day for the entire week. If you are able to add one sentence or a paragraph to an article, improve one lead or simply add a few robust references, you will be making an important contribution.

For more information about the edit-a-thon, visit our Wikipedia project page

Download the guide: How to contribute climate change information to Wikipedia

This post was sponsored by Future Climate for Africa. See our editorial guidelines for what this means.