Four Things to Know About LGBTQ+ Activism on Wikipedia, with Lane Rasberry

In honor of Pride Month, UVA School of Data Science Wikimedian-in-Residence Lane Rasberry shares how to use data science to edit Wikipedia and advance LGBTQ activism. Rasberry explains four ways to get involved in LGBTQ forums. 

1. What should I do if I’m not familiar with Wikipedia? “The first step that I recommend is to post a comment or question in a public discussion forum, find collaborators and get their help and support and advice.”
2. What if I don’t know how I want to do LGBTQ activism on Wikipedia? “If you don't have an idea for what you want to do, you can go into any forum and say, Hey, who's doing something gay, I'd like to collaborate with them!"
3. What if I want to ask a question in an LGBTQ forum? “If you want to start in a gay forum, I recommend the forum at wiki project LGBT studies, Wiki Loves Pride, or Wikimedia LGBT+, all of which have existing gay communities who were doing all kinds of projects."
4. How can I implement Data Science? “If you want to see the data side of Wikipedia, you're going to jump from Wikipedia to Wikidata. And the reason why I think that you should check this out and understand how it works is if you see the structured data side of wiki data, you will better understand data science, and you will better understand how information is indexed on the internet, and how it is made machine-readable. Something that needs to be done in Wikipedia and Wikidata that there's a lot of work to do, and where you can easily find tasks to do, is look up the Wikipedia article for LGBT culture in and then any country in the world. If it doesn't exist, then you can make that entry in Wikidata” Add significant events to that entry!  

Watch the full video to learn more about LGBTQ+ activism and Wikipedia.

 Links Mentioned: 

• Wikimedia LGBT+ : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT+
• Wiki Loves Pride: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Loves_Pride
• WikiProject LGBT Studies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_LGBT_studies
• Example entries of LGBT+ culture by country
  • United States - https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6457905
  • India - https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6457827