Bay Area's Wikipedia-curious gather to share local insight

San Francisco-based Wikipedia has been a pillar of the internet for more than 25 years now. From articles about Highway 101 to the president of Paraguay, the free encyclopedia offers user-generated and fact-checked information on more than 7 million topics in English as well as in other languages. A growing group of Wikipedia users and editors are now meeting in real life to discuss how to get involved and to make the site better. As many as 300 people are expected. At an event tomorrow called WikiCurious, rooted in Oakland, this is part of the focus here is to get people more involved in sharing knowledge on Oakland's history and culture. And for more, we are joined live this afternoon by C.J. Brickhouse, who is part of Wikimedia Bay Area and has been an editor on Wikipedia for 11 years. Thank you so much for being here. So most of us have used Wikipedia, but I don't know that everyone really understands Wikipedia. What this site is about, who contributes the information, who checks on the information. Wikipedia is built by people like me, by all of your viewers. It's built by everyone. So the way that we understand information and the way that we check it is by discussing it. If we have conflicts, we go on to the talk page and we discuss. Does this source have a history of fact checking? Does it issue corrections? What are its biases? And we come to a collective decision on what do we think. ...is most reliable, and can we show all sides in our text? It's about building history and building information collectively. What should people know about the steps they should take if they see something on Wikipedia that they disagree with or they feel like maybe doesn't sort of present a full enough picture of an event? Yeah, so we have a saying, be bold. It's one of our longest standing policies. You can just try and fix it if you see something wrong. Try your hand at making an edit. If it's something more complicated, every page has what's called a talk page or a discussion page. It's up in the corner, and you click on it, and you can make what's essentially a forum post. You write down what you think is wrong, and other people who monitor the page can see your contribution, discuss it, and figure out how can we maybe... Put your contribution into the page. And include it. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about the event that's happening in Oakland, because there's actually a pretty active Wikipedia community here in the Bay Area. Tell us about these community gatherings. What's the point of them? And what do you hope to walk away with? Yeah. So I've been part of Bay Area Wikimedians since it was revitalized in 2022. And we meet every month. Our wiki... A birthday party, which you're showing on screen now, and some of our salons, had over 500 people coming to the San Francisco Public Library. The goal is to just build our community. We're working together, and it's a collaborative effort. What you should walk away with is an understanding that you're not alone in wanting to share information with your fellow citizens. And so, sorry, but so these are open to anyone. Do you need any sort of expertise or any background in editing? No, no background necessary. In fact, you don't even have to be interested in writing or editing. There's lots of ways to contribute. We have wiki portraits. So if you're interested in taking photographs of things around you, of sites, landmarks, different people, you can contribute that way. If you are somewhat interested in computer science, if you're a game designer. We have wiki game jams. We have different kinds of technical contributions. And at all of these meetups, there's lots of different ways for you to get involved and talk to people who are doing that work. So you can find out, where do I fit in and how can I contribute? Yeah, I mean, who do you think should come out to this event tomorrow? Who are the people in the community, especially in the East Bay, who you think can help to kind of offer some more insight and knowledge about Oakland specifically and its history and its culture? I think everyone should feel comfortable coming, but where we've traditionally seen underrepresented information on Wikipedia are people of color, women, non-binary people, all of the various marginalized groups whose history hasn't made it into the archives or isn't as clear. So if you collect zines, that's a great place to get in because we can look at the zines and we can contribute those. Or if you have local history or know of local archives, or even have old books that maybe aren't found in libraries easily, those are all great things to bring with you so that we can try and incorporate our community's knowledge into this global library. Maybe it's just going to the basement or going to the garage and kind of opening up some of those boxes, it sounds like, right? Yeah. Old newspapers, there are lots of things that you'd be surprised aren't archived. We had a great... Program with the Prelinger Archive, which collects ephemera, so things like posters, zines, all of these sorts of things from the early Black Panther parties, from all of these activities in San Francisco during the Gay Liberation Movement. All of these sorts of things that aren't necessarily saved, that even weren't meant to be saved, but are important and can be included. And it's great to be able to do that work. Yeah, and that's what one of the goals of the events, right, is to especially reach out to those types of communities, those who are marginalized. Yes. I think that what we really want to do is show that you belong here, that your stories matter, and that you can help contribute them. All right, so what do people need to know to be a part of the event tomorrow? Do they need to sign up ahead of time? Yes, so we have a website, luma.com slash wikibayarea. You can find all of our upcoming events on that website, and you can learn how you can get involved. But the main takeaway is if you want to get involved, you don't have to wait for the invitation. You can be bold and just try your hand at editing. If you want to join the community and find out a bit more. We have these activities. What is the most rewarding part of being a Wikipedia editor, and what's the most challenging part of this role? The most rewarding part really is getting to see the impact you have, all of the information that people get to learn about the world around them. I think the most challenging part is sometimes doing that research. For the difficult things, you really have to hit the ground. You have to find these small libraries. You have to find these small groups of people who have that history, and that's a lot of work. But it's very rewarding at the end of it. Yeah, because accuracy is important to maintain that credibility for sure. All right, really appreciate it. I hope a lot of people turn out at the event. Thank you for coming in. Appreciate it.