Mary Kom just broke the record for the number of titles in the AIBA Women's World Boxing Championship 2018, which was hosted in New Delhi. And as boxers battled it out in the ring, a group of women spent a day working on getting more online recognition for Indian women boxers. This wasn't the first time the group met for a Wikipedia edit-a-thon. Feminism In India holds edit-a-thons every month to build on and create pages about Indian women and gender issues on the world's largest encyclopedia. They estimate they've edited between 250 to 300 pages in the last 2 years.
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 So today, we are organizing a Wikipedia edit-a-thon.
00:17 And we would be editing pages on Indian women boxers.
00:21 I'm creating a Wikipedia page for Lovlina Burgohain, who
00:25 is a boxer from Assam.
00:27 And she's actually represented India
00:29 at the Commonwealth Games earlier this year.
00:31 And she's also won a national championship
00:33 in boxing in the India Open.
00:36 But she doesn't have a Wikipedia page.
00:38 A lot of Wikipedia pages are written by men.
00:40 And most of these pages are about women,
00:42 which brings a gap about the kind of language people use.
00:46 And that language perpetrates the patriarchal
00:49 and the sexist society that we've been dealing with.
00:53 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:57 We have been doing Wikipedia edit-a-thons
01:00 since more than two years now.
01:02 And we do one every month.
01:04 And every month, we choose a new topic.
01:06 We have edited about anywhere between 250 to 300 pages
01:11 over these two years.
01:12 We have done women in cricket, women athletes, women
01:16 in politics, women in tech, women authors, women poets.
01:22 I use Wikipedia all the time to write
01:24 and I use Wikipedia all the time to find further information
01:29 when I'm writing articles or researching anything.
01:31 So I think it's pretty amazing to be
01:34 able to contribute to that and build pages on that.
01:36 We prefer offline meetups because most
01:38 of the participants who come, they are first-time editors.
01:42 Wikipedia only allows you to write articles
01:45 if there are enough interviews or articles written
01:49 about a certain person.
01:51 The same gender gap exists in all kinds of representation,
01:56 not just on Wikipedia, but in our media,
01:58 who we're choosing to consume information about,
02:01 who we're choosing to write about.
02:03 So men are more represented on the internet.
02:06 The sources that I found, I did not
02:08 know if I could trust the sources because a lot of sources
02:12 make it seem like a bit more than it actually is.
02:15 So I think that was sighting and trying
02:17 to find the correct source and trying
02:20 to find what to trust and how to trust it
02:23 was the most difficult part for me.
02:25 One tip for beginners is that you shouldn't
02:28 create a new article, but you should start
02:30 with just editing small, small stuff here and there.
02:34 And once you are confident and you
02:36 have achieved a certain number of edits,
02:38 then you qualify to create a new article.
02:41 It's fairly straightforward and anyone can do it,
02:43 even sitting at home.
02:44 There are a lot of resources available
02:46 on how to start editing on Wikipedia.
02:48 I think I've done about 45 to 50 so far,
02:51 but that's actually not a very high number
02:53 by Wikipedia standards.
02:55 I really enjoy it.
02:56 I think it's a really nice, small community project,
02:59 and we learn a lot, I think, editing and Wikipedia,
03:03 which is open to everybody.
03:05 And anyone can access it, and anyone can edit it.
03:08 I think people should volunteer more.
03:11 So I would love to come back again.
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