Wikipedia edit-a-thons to add content on LGBTs
The article by Renuka Phadnis was published in the Hindu on July 7, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.
It is inspired by “Wiki Loves Pride”, a global campaign to expand and improve LGBT-related content across Wikimedia projects. The campaign focuses on the June to October period, when LGBTs around the world celebrate their community.
An “edit-a-thon” is a workshop where people are trained in how to edit the Wikipedia and add content to it, usually focussing on a particular topic.
The aim is to make Wikipedia inclusive and reflect diversity by creating content on the LGBT discourse: history, culture, rights, equal opportunities and Article 377. The focus is also on generating content in regional Indian languages which do not have equivalents for terms such as “gay”, “lesbian” or “bisexual”. The website https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/ Events/Wiki_Loves _Pride_2014 has listed 11 languages.
The edit-a-thon will culminate in two offline events in Bangalore and Delhi on July 19, creating a forum for the community. While anyone can participate in the edit-a-thon, Vishnu, programme director for Access to Knowledge at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, which works on improving Indian language Wikipedias and India-related content on Wikipedia, said, “We hope the [LGBT] community takes the lead.”
