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LGBTQ Lowcountry Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon : Home

The College of Charleston Special Collections will be hosting a virtual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon the week of July 13-17, 2020. Participants are encouraged to use this guide as a home base for their research.

Welcome

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Best Practices for Editing Wikipedia

Neutrality

 All content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately, and without bias. We write about people, places, and things without inserting our personal views and opinions of them or their lives. We also rewrite biased articles.


Maintain Verifiability

On Wikipedia, verifiability means that people reading and editing the encyclopedia can check that information comes from a reliable, published source. You should see citations at the bottom of every article, and if you don't, that's a problem. You'll need to add citations to articles from mainstream newspapers, magazines, books, etc. to keep them from being deleted.


No Original Research

Wikipedia does not publish original thought or original research: you must cite an independent, reliable, published sources for every claim you make. A new analysis of the material that advances a position not proven by the sources is not allowed.


Conflict of Interest

Sometimes being messy is fun, but not in the world of documentation. If you think you have a Conflict Of Interest (COI), don';t create or edit an article. Instead, post that someone else should build it on the article talk page or a related talk page. Talk pages are places where editors discuss/argue about an article';s content. Editors should never write articles about themselves, their loved ones, or about where they work, for example. Other Wikipedians delete articles and content when it is clear that they were written by their subject, even if the person meets notability standards.


Use Reliable Sources

If available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are considered the most reliable. Other reliable sources include university-level textbooks, books published by respected publishing houses, magazines, journals, and mainstream newspapers. You must make use of reliable sources to build the content of an article. Of course, you need to paraphrase or rewrite the source material using your own words, so you're not plagiarizing.

Notability

The notability criterion on Wikipedia means that if the subject of an article hasn't received significant coverage by reliable third-party sources, then most likely, it will not be considered notable enough to have its page or exist on the platform at all. There are specific guidelines for artist biographies, events, books, organizations, etc. We emphasize the words "respected" and "reliable" because so much of history has excluded women, indigenous, Black and brown people, queer and trans folks, etc. We want to be clear that just because Wikipedia's rules say something or someone isn't notable, does not mean it's not noteworthy.

Language courtesy of Art+Feminism

How to Join

LGBTQ Lowcountry Wikipedia edit-a-thon will be a fully virtual event from July 13th-July 18th, 2020.

How to Participate

Step 1: Create a Wikipedia account 

Step 2: Sign up via our campaign dashboard here

Step 3: If you are new to editing, complete Wikipedia training modules here or learn through the interactive Wikipedia Adventure

Step 4: Select an article in need from the curated list of topics, or identify your own topic related to the theme

Step 5: Contribute to your article 

  • It doesn't have to be perfect- contribute what you can and others will add more later. Every sentence helps!

Step 6: Don't forget to cite your sources! 

  • Find sources in the Resources for Research tab of this LibGuide or on your own

  • Add a citation using Wikipedia Style (learn more about adding citations here)

Step 7: Share!

  • Let others know about your accomplishment on social media

  • Include the hashtag #WikiLovesLowcountryPride on posts about the event 

Step 8: Tell us how it went

  • After the event is over, we will send you a short survey to help us improve for next time

LGBTQ Project Archivist

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Mary Jo Fairchild
Contact:
843-953-1424
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Special Collections Research and Outreach Specialist

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