From 8 March to 8 April, the second edition of the WikiGap Challenge took place. The WikiGap Challenge is a challenge aiming to create or improve articles about women on Wikipedia. It is a part of the WikiGap campaign, organized by Wikimedia Sverige, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Swedish embassies and Wikimedia affiliates across the world. This year, we teamed up with the UN Human Rights office, who proposed a list of 20 women human rights defenders that had no Wikipedia articles. Here are the results!
What unites the Afghan police officer Islam Bibi and the Mexican mother Miriam Rodríguez Martínez? Both were women. Both fought for human rights. And both died because they fought. That, and much more, is what we have learnt in this year’s edition of the WikiGap Challenge, which has now ended.
WikiGap Challenge is a challenge where the aim is to write and improve articles about women. It is the second year that Wikimedia Sverige, the Swedish Wikimedia Chapter, organizes the challenge together with the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This year, together with UN Human Rights as well. For WikiGap Challenge 2020, the participants gained bonus points for writing about women fighting for human rights. UN Human Rights nominated twenty women, who in most cases lacked any article on Wikipedia, but who have had a big, positive impact on human rights in their respective communities. The result is astonishing: 338 articles have been created about the 20 women nominated by UN Human Rights, in more than 30 languages!
Photo: European Parliament, CC BY 2.0.
The participants got bonus points for writing about these 20 women, but all women counted. In total, 72 participants have written or improved 3,224 articles about women, in more than 35 different languages. Many astonishing stories have been made accessible through the challenge. The article about the environmental activist Greta Thunberg is as a result of the challenge now a featured article on Sorani Wikipedia. English readers can take part of information about the Guinean politician Nanfadima Magassouba, a member of the country’s National Assembly who have fought against polygamy in the country. In Yoruba, you can read about another Guinean politician, Hadja Saran Daraba Kaba, who was the only woman to compete in the presidential elections in 2010. And in Armenian, you can read about Luisa Cuesta’s fight to find people who disappeared during the military dictatorship in Uruguay.
With the challenge closed, we can now also announce the winner: the Winner of WikiGap Challenge 2020 is Andriy Gritsenko, also the winner last year: he has managed to create or translate no less than 416 articles about women on Ukrainian, Russian, Belarussian and Bashkir Wikipedia versions. Congratulations, Andriy! The winner of this year’s challenge gets to visit UN Human Rights office in Geneva, when the situation in the world allows it.
When asking Andriy what he found inspiring with the challenge, he answers that one thing that interested him was writing the article about the Ukrainian feminist and LGBTQ activist Anna Sharygina: “I would like more such articles! I was twice as pleased that she was from Ukraine, and that there was so much information about her – so pleased that I wrote about her not only in Ukrainian, but Russian, Belarusian and Bashkir too!”
Andriy Gritsenko has been writing on Wikipedia since 2013, and have contibuted with more than 3,500 articles: “ After all, you go at your own pace, writing and topics that you are interested in, exploring new, developing, improving your skills. Anyone can learn this and create at first 1-2 articles a week.”
Moreover, he continues, when you write articles on Wikipedia, you do the work that everyone needs. As Wikipedia becomes more and more popular encyclopedia for students and adults. That is an important social and intellectual mission.
More information, and the rest of the winners, can be found here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiGap_Challenge/Results