Women in STEM Wikithon

I had the honour of hosting the 1st Women in STEM Wikithon at UCL (26th July) as part of the Women in Physics Group activities. The afternoon kicked off with invited speakers Dr Jess Wade, perhaps the most prolific Wiki editor physicist, and Dr. Alice White (Wikimedian in residence and Digital Editor for the Wellcome Trust. A fantastic turnout of approx. 40 people came! I will be organising a Wikithon per term and you can see my own Wiki edits under my username Opto_kitty

Why should you care about Wikipedia?

Women have and continue to further the advances of science yet many are forgotten, uncredited or lack prominance online. Let's change the status quo by addressing the gender imbalance on Wikipedia! We also strongly encourage biographies on women who identify as LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning, and others) or are a POC (person of colour).

Wikipedia is the 5th most visited site in the world with 1.5 million biographies in English yet only 17% are about women. By teaching people how to edit Wikipedia, we can support trailblazer women in STEM to create balance in gender representation and take away this unfair bias in our historical record.

With your help, we aim to create and edit new Wikipedia pages to shine a light on these incredible women who act as role models to present and future generations.

Battling the Reddit trolls..

Myself, Jess, Alice and Dr. Claire Murray then proceeded to do a Reddit AskMeAnything, organised by Imperial College. To put it mildly; it was like virtual deep web hell. We got quite viciously trolled; here’s the link!!