by Joanna Hare
Hong Kong Libraries Connect

Today I’d like to share my experience working with Wikipedia Program and Events Dashboards as a means of collecting evidence of edits to Wikipedia articles made during a edit-a-thon.

On March 9 2018, Hong Kong Libraries Connect (HKLC) hosted an Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. Art+Feminism started in New York in 2013, and has grown into a massive, global campaign “improving coverage of cis and transgender women, feminism and the arts on Wikipedia”. I have edited Wikipedia before, and provided teaching support for a Wikipedia editing assessment, but this was my first time coordinating a formal edit-a-thon – and my first time hearing about Wikipedia Dashboards! Assuming there are others out there like me for whom this might be new information, let me describe the basics.

A Wikipedia Dashboard is a tool that allows users to sign-in to a Wikipedia program or event. Once they have logged into that program, all edits they make on Wikipedia will be tracked and attributed to that particular program or event, giving everyone a clear picture of their editing efforts. Here is a screenshot of our Dashboard, showing the total results of our editing efforts at the end of our event:

In the space of three hours we edited 15 articles, made 45 edits, and added over 2000 words. Not bad for a group of beginners! Also in this screenshot you can see you have the option to track the edits associated with an event for longer than the event itself, allowing participants to make edits before and after the event. You can also see under ‘Actions’ the button where users can choose to join the program, and the option to download the statistics. This option downloads to Excel, and has more detailed statistics than what you see on screen. For example, the Excel download tells me 9 of our 11 participants were new editors.

My favourite feature is listed under ‘Articles’ in the menu at the top of the screen. Here you can see what edits were made and by whom via coloured highlights:

Art+Feminism provided very detailed instructions for how to set up the Dashboard and associate your event with their campaign, but in fact it was quite easy. The process is quite similar to setting up an event in any blogging or web management platform – and Wikipedia takes care of the rest!

While I often talk about Wikipedia in my information literacy workshops, showing students the ‘back end’ and demonstrate the ease with which one can edit articles, I was not aware of this excellent tool that would allow me to have students join a program, make edits to Wikipedia, and then easily collect evidence of their efforts. I contacted the Art+Feminism coordinators (who are fabulous, by the way) to ask about using the Dashboard in the classroom, and they pointed me to Wiki Education Dashboards, which has loads of resources available to higher education instructors who want to use Wikipedia for assessment tasks. It seems support is limited to Canada and the US for the time being, but the site is worth a look regardless of your location. The tutorials and case studies are excellent.

This is all new to me so apologies to readers who are already familiar with the platform! The dashboard was a breeze to use and I am looking forward to experimenting with it to incorporate some Wikipedia editing into my next workshop. I’d like to acknowledge the support of the Art+Feminism coordinators who were speedy and warm in their support, very accommodating of first timers, and provide a lot of helpful print and multimedia resources. If you have never organised a Wikipedia event before, Art+Feminism is a great place to start.

This article gives the views of the author and not necessarily the views the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice or the University Library, University of Saskatchewan.