Academic writes 270 Wikipedia pages in a year to get female scientists noticed
Jess Wade is a scientist on a mission. She wants every woman who has achieved something impressive in science to get the prominence and recognition they deserve – starting with a Wikipedia entry. “I’ve done about 270 in the past year,” says Wade, a postdoctoral researcher in the field of plastic electronics at Imperial College London’s Blackett Laboratory.
Yowsah. 270. I have tried four separate times to submit a new article in Wikipedia and have failed. What’s her secret?
– choose topics from your own personal experience
– let your passions be your guide
– find analogous spaces someone else is doing and model that.
– Champion a book.
– Get local then go global.
Here are some additional suggestions I found in other articles:
-Run a wikithon.
-Scroll through Twitter.
Here is a quote of interest where she models part of her process:
The Twitter account @blackphysicists has helped me find heaps of African-American scientists who are wiki-worthy. Then I spend a couple of hours searching for impartial sources—citations written when they’ve won an award, news reports about their research, announcements when they receive promotion. There are heaps of newspapers archived online for free, which helps, especially when trying to work out women’s maiden names. I love when I can find where they went to school, what their parents did and who inspires them—that sounds weird I know—I think it helps readers understand that scientists are just normal people who found something they love.
Lastly, here is a gathering of links that I filched from the net using Zotero and Dropbox. If you don’t like all the text just follow the hyperlinks out and about.
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