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GLAM/Newsletter/May 2023/Contents/Australia report

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Australia report

Improving Wikipedia pages about Australian women filmmakers at ACMI

Wikimedia Australia staff showing the origins of Wikipedia
In May, staff and volunteers at Wikimedia Australia visited ACMI to run an editathon around improving Wikipedia pages about Australian women filmmakers.

Goddess

Wikimedia Australia staff presenting at ACMI

ACMI are currently holding an exhibition titled Goddess : Power, Glamour, Rebellion. The exhibition celebrates women and gender-transcending superstars from around the world, and includes costumes, posters, film, and material such as original sketches from pre-production.

ACMI and Wikimedia Australia partnered to hold two editathons around this same theme, and improve existing Wikipedia pages of Australian women filmmakers and their filmographies.

We held two editathons in one day, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Both started with a short complimentary tour of the Goddess exhibition, before we went upstairs to learn about Wikipedia and start editing.

Across the day, we had 10 participants who were all eager to learn how they could improve Wikipedia. Some had edited before, while others had only just signed up for an account that morning!

Impact

Our ten editors worked on just over 20 different articles on Wikipedia. These ranged from adding an infobox and additional references to Paulette McDonagh and Phyllis McDonagh, to adding awards tables to Maya Newell and Garage Days.

At the end of each session, participants discussed what they'd learnt and how editing Wikipedia had been demystified for them. Being able to use the automatic citation tool and visual editor made things much more accessible to newcomers, while existing editors spent time exploring the Wikipedia Manual of Style and even made some additions to Wikidata.

See the Dashboard here.

Friday morning vs afternoon

This was the first time we held two events in one day. We thought it was an interesting experiment to get an idea of what time suited people better, so we held them across a Friday. But most of the people who attended the morning session admitted they'd taken time off work to attend, and that Friday mornings actually weren't ideal!

Everyone said they'd be interested in follow up events, but there was no consensus on a day or time, so further experimentation will be required.

ACMI were very happy with the events (and were excellent hosts!), so we hope to hold more with them in the future. All attendees were given a complimentary ACMI membership and video rental accessible to the ACMI website, which was greatly appreciated.


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