Wednesday, April 8, 2015

WDOTY: Starting out, getting organized, having fun

In my last post I wrote about the project to add more women to Wikipedia.  What I didn't write about was the Inspire Campaign, which is aimed at increasing gender diversity in Wikipedia.  I submitted a grant proposal that, if funded, would let me work on this very intensively.

That paragraph was essentially a full disclosure. What I really want to talk about is the fun I'm having.

It's not hard to go down a Wiki hole, and this project is only intensifying that.  At least I have the excuse of trying to learn how to do things in Wikipedia, how to do WikiProjects, and how to communicate with people on the Wikipedia platform. (spoiler: kinda convoluted)

The last few days have been spent doing analysis on DOTY pages and finding women to include on/in DOTY. (The grammar gets really strange when dealing with acronyms)

Here's an analysis of May 1:

Births

Men: 225 Women: 60

Deaths

Men: 77 Women: 16
There are also events involving men and women in history, but I'm unclear on how to count them, especially when there are wars and battles referencing two kings.  There are also references to queens taking charge or doing things, so it might still be worthwhile to count those.

Finding women to add has been made a lot easier by the Women's History Project, specifically the Categories, which is what I've been surfing.

Just for fun I decided to see how far back in history I could go to find women who meet the criteria for inclusion in Days of the Year.  It turns out to be the third and fourth centuries BC.

Today I found Macrina the Younger. There's only a date of death, but she had a significant influence on the thinking of Universalist philosophy.  She is listed on July 19th, her date of death, but on the observances section.

It's entirely possible that someone could have found her page through her relatives or through other categories, but the point of the project is to find more interesting women to add to the days of the year. That's the part that's keeping me going. What other nuggets will I find?

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