Wikipedia is holding a contest with the aim of improving gender diversity across the site.
Throughout November, the Women in Red World Contest is aiming to create 2,500 new biographical articles by the end of the month on women from every country and occupation around the world.
Currently, the women’s biographies account for just 17.15 per cent, in relation to male biographies at present. The contest is part of a project to increase diversity and the percentage of women’s biographies on Wikipedia.
To reach the 2,500-article target, it is estimated that 83 new articles need to be uploaded each day in November. British women who are currently missing include airbus engineer Jacqueline Castle; Smith and Sinclair founder, Melanie Goldsmith; film-maker Sarah Hobson; and footballer Millie Turner.
The total prize fund for the contest is over £3000 and Wikimedia UK are offering Amazon voucher prizes, with the top prize of £150 for anyone who writes the most satisfactory new articles on British women.
To take part in the contest, writers should enter their names in the participant’s section of the contest page. You can view a list of the missing biographies of women from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) here. You can find missing biographies specifically of British women here.
If you are competing for prizes, you can also list your entries in the United Kingdom section on the page for Europe during the contest and the prize claims page for most new British biographies at the end of the contest.
Contest organiser, Wikipedia user Dr Blofeld said, “we’ll accept any UK women bios, but the emphasis is really on those notable missing dictionary entries, particularly the ODNB and the Welsh Dictionary of Biography.”
“In just a week, over 600 articles have been produced worldwide already, but at present not many editions are doing British entries.”
“Here is a chance to significantly increase our proportion of British women biographies and target really notable missing articles.”
“Even if you only have time to create one or two entries, everything counts.”
