We are pleased to invite you to join Wikimedia NYC for a series of roundtables about craft on Wikipedia. This invitation is open to representatives from all craft organizations in New York City and to representatives from national organizations who are also local residents. Please join us!
Held via Zoom in three sessions through September, these roundtables will explore contributing to Wikipedia and Wikidata as a process of making information by hand as well as give you practical tools for editing and creating new articles.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia crafted by millions of editors, working together around the globe, to create a common resource. Craft also has a long history of skilled, cooperative making—hot shops, community woodshops, and foundries rely on cooperation in real time, while quilting bees and kiln firings punctuate individual practices with social gatherings and skill-sharing. By crafting Wikipedia article by article, we participate in making our digital commons together.
Wikipedia is the 5th most visited site on the internet and the first stop for most internet researchers, but it has many information gaps. To help fill the gap about craft histories, techniques, and individual artists, we are presenting a series of events that will teach craft institution professionals how to contribute to Wikipedia.
The goals of these roundtables are:
-
To train craftspeople to contribute to Wikipedia and Wikidata
-
To gather and share information about missing articles and articles that need expansion
-
To build ties between craft-related organizations in New York City
Roundtable 1: Wikipedia
September 1, 12-1pm EST
This session will include an introduction to guidelines and best practices on Wikipedia, including Wikipedia’s strengths and biases. You will learn how to edit, how to communicate with other editors, and how to get your edits to stick.
Roundtable 2: Wikidata
September 15, 12-1pm EST
This session will explore data modeling and categorization on Wikidata. You will learn how to contribute to Wikidata and match it to existing databases.
Roundtable 3: Task List
September 29, 12-1pm EST
In this session participants will collaborate to create a task list of craft techniques, materials, artists, and styles to be added to Wikipedia. This task list can be shared with each organization’s community and used for targeted editing sessions at future edit-a-thons.
Each session will be attended by representatives from NYC craft organizations and will be jointly led by craft artist Sara Clugage and Wikipedian Richard Knipel.
To RSVP for this series of roundtables, please reply to this email with your confirmation by August 25, 2021. RSVP here
Zoom links will be sent to all confirmed participants.
We hope to see you there!
Sincerely,
Sara and Richard
Roundtable Leader Bios:
Sara Clugage’s art practice focuses on economic and political issues in craft and food. She is the editor-in-chief of Dilettante Army (an online journal for visual culture and critical theory), an organizer for the Wikipedia campaign Art+Feminism, and core faculty for the MA program in Critical Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College. She serves on the boards of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and the Textile Society of America.
Richard Knipel has been a Wikipedia editor since 2004, and has tried to build social and cultural bridges between encyclopedic and artistic movements through a variety of grassroots projects. Richard has also filled the role of Wikimedian-in-Residence at the Met, and previously at the Guggenheim. He serves on the boards of Wikimedia New York City and the Wiki Education Foundation.
