The edit-a-thon, as it has been dubbed, is a chance to improve and add content about women who have made an important contribution to society on Wikipedia.

“Wikipedia is the main source of information for the majority of people nowadays,” said edit-a-thon organiser Hélène Walland.

“There’s not a lot of women collaborating--I think just 15% of editors are women. This also reflects on what’s going to be on Wikipedia.”

Walland explained that compared to posts about men on Wikipedia, there were fewer posts about women and those that did exist tended to be shorter.

A US movement

The Wiki edit-a-thon concept that grew out of the US where it was started by the Art and Feminism collective.

The idea is that on specific days groups of people meet to edit Wikipedia within specific themes, to the benefit of mainly minority groups.

Walland discovered the concept while living in Paris, and hopes to import it to Luxembourg by orgnanising a workshop at the Feminism in Culture event hosted at the Abbaye Neimënster on 12 March.

“A lot of people think you have to have a huge knowledge about computers and programmer to do it. Actually, it’s quite easy to add content.”

Another discouraging factor for women on Wikipedia, Walland suggested, was the talk pages on Wikipedia, where editors discuss the content in posts.  “I also heard, but didn’t experience it, that in the talk pages there is sexism going on. But I think it’s close to the video games scene.”

The two-hour workshop will be an initiation designed to give participants the skills and confidence to edit and add to Wikipedia entries themselves around themes which interest them.

“If there’s enough people interested to maybe meet, two, three or four times a year for half a day and then go deeper into it,” said Walland.

The Wiki edit-a-thon takes place on 12 March at 3pm at Luxembourg's Abbaye de Neimënster.

Registration is possible by emailing [email protected] or calling 241095-1. Participants are urged to bring their own laptops where possible.