wikimania – Jackie Koerner

Reflections on Wikimania 2018

Looking out over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans at Cape Point. Photo by me licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

A couple weeks ago, I started an adventure I never imagined I would. I traveled to Cape Town, South Africa to attend Wikimania 2018. Last month I posted my reflection on Learning Days at Wikimania 2018, so if you haven’t read that, start there and then come back to read my reflection on Wikimania 2018.

To begin Wikimania 2018, the planning committee organized an opening party at Two Oceans Aquarium. I was so excited! I love ocean life, so this made the night amazing from the start. While there I got to meet some new wiki friends and end the night with my oldest of wiki friends. I love that no matter how long it has been since we have seen each other, we start back up like it was no time at all. This community is really what makes all wiki things go – from creation to connection.

African penguin on Boulders Beach. Photo by me licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

While at Wikimania, there was so much to learn from everyone who came. I realized at Wikimania 2017 how open people were with their knowledge, a stark change from the academic conferences I had attended. This only expanded when I attended the Wikimedia Diversity Conference. There I learned so much from broader parts of the world and truly understood in sharp relief how Western-centric our focus is. This experience and observations I made during Learning Days convinced me to make a commitment. I chose during Wikimania 2018 to listen and not take space where other people’s voices should be heard. I am glad I did, because I learned so much from communities and people I had not otherwise met at other Wikimedia events.

The people I met told me stories about what they are doing in their community, what they have accomplished and what their challenges are. There were successes of getting information literacy on the national and college curriculum, and there were challenges of the very real and mortal risks of free speech. These are people in their own countries and communities doing amazing things. Many of the presentations echoed my strong beliefs about the needs of the free knowledge movement to focus more on empowering communities doing the work.

African penguins on Boulders Beach. Photo by me licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Below I’ll summarize the information from my pictures, notes and tweets that I took during the sessions as well as tidbits of information about the week:

Gaps in Global GLAM Capacity
This session was a panel of people working to collect critical information digitally before it is destroyed by age or other natural factors. They discussed the issues of building relationships and convincing people this is something that is culturally critical.

Centering Knowledge from the Margins
Whose Knowledge hosted a panel of organizers, scholars and allies to discuss knowledge and privilege. Some quotes I have from that session are:

On Wikipedia a lot of people think they’re experts in a lot of different areas, even though they’re not.

Having to create a handle that sounds like a white European man to avoid cultural oppression is not tech equity.

Online is a space we inhabit now. I want people who search for the key words ‘Native American’ to find something more than just statistics about alcoholism.

If you don’t have information about your community, you erode the sense of belonging to that community.

Many of us had to start from scratch. One hundred new editors and 100 articles may seem small, but when you consider the level of illiteracy that we are subject to, these numbers are huge.

We are coming to a conversation about tech equity with immense disparity. We are not on equal footing as the oppressor, which puts us in a disadvantage in this dialogue.

Now that we’re at the table, how are we going to disrupt the whole game?

The act of telling the truth is an act of freedom, but it’s also an act of great risk.

The process of updating and correcting knowledge about your community online often requires you to engage with your oppressor.

Looking out from the lighthouse at Cape Point. Photo by me licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Creating Knowledge Equity and Spatial Justice on Wikipedia
The first plenary session was a presentation by researcher and data scientist, Dr. Martin Dittus. This session was recorded so do go watch his presentation. I am going to post some pictures I snapped of his slides.

Capture of Dr. Martin Dittus’ presentation

This research proves what many of us already felt. He illustrated how knowledge geography is a huge part of Wikipedia. He compared the region of the knowledge contributor to the region about which they were writing. Culture is an American export. We also feel like we can accurately assess and document any culture with authority. He also said very accurately,

In certain parts of the world it may cost more than your monthly income to go online.

What is happening online right now digitally is of great importance to those of us in the physical world.

Information geography helps us to understand how we build a narrate of the world. Our devices shape how we understand the world, and how we act there, too. The maps has become the territory: the digital is the world now.

After the plenary, I skipped out and headed to dinner with Chris and some of his colleagues. We went to Addis in Cape, an Ethiopian restaurant. This dinner was amazing. I am genuinely sorry you weren’t there. We ate it all – from delicious ciders to injera made from teff to azifa and ended the night with a coffee ceremony.

State of Research in Knowledge Gaps and State of Wikimedia Research
These sessions (1, 2) presented research about all things wiki and where we should go next. There has been a lot on gaps in the past year. There are data sets online for those of you looking deeper into gaps. Check out Research on meta, get involved, and present at OpenSym.

Dassie on Table Mountain. Photo by me licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

After the research sessions, Chris and I decided to go to Table Mountain. There we hiked around for about 2 hours taking pictures of amazing views and adorable little Dassies.

Dassie calling their buddies. Photo by me licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

After the mountain trip, we went to the mall to shop for some new luggage. Between St. Louis and Cape Town, Delta destroyed my luggage, and I decided a suitcase wrapped in duct tape might look a bit shady to airport security. I am, however, very grateful that received my bag with the contents still inside. Sadly some of my friends didn’t receive their bags or the contents at all.

Besides adulting and shopping for luggage, we bought some gifts and ate dinner right on the water. Living in the Midwestern United States, the seafood I am able to eat is always frozen. Every dinner with seafood in Cape Town was delicious. I even got to try a local fish, Kingklip.

Cape Point. Photo by me licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Rounding out a wonderful week, the following morning I attended one of my favorite plenary sessions:

The Dangers of Supremely White Data and The Coded Gaze by Joy Buolamwini Do yourself a huge favor and google her. She’s an incredible mind who is changing the world and everyone can learn great things from her. I appreciated Joy speaking to the crowd about how we all must go deeper than the studies and look at the data. We need to ask, “What data are algorithms being trained with? Who is doing this study? How does it work in real world settings?”

I absolutely love how she answered the following question from the audience, “How do you make bias easier for teams to identify?” She replied simply, “Employ diverse teams.” Yes. Yes! YES!

Bluff at Cape Point. Photo by me licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Following the plenary session, I attended sessions focusing on the gender gap. All these sessions have video recordings, and I encourage you to go watch the videos, read more, and do something about the gender gap:
Research on gender gap in Wikipedia: What do we know so far?
Women leading the way toward gender equity
Building new bridges to close the Wikimedia gendergap
What can we learn from the Feminist movement for knowledge equity?

The first and last sessions on the list actually inspired this post from my husband.

My takeaways from the gender gap sessions are: most if not all gender gap research is completed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Women don’t respond to surveys as often as men do. Women don’t get support from their community when harassed and threatened by male editors. Words convey subtle bias. The quantity of women in leadership roles in the Wikimedia movement is larger than anticipated given the population gender distribution. I personally wonder about how the leaders are being accepted in the community in their leadership roles beyond just being referred to as leaders.

Looking out at the oceans at Cape Point. Photo by me licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

After the gender gap sessions, I dipped into Beyond the meat grinder: building better new editor experiences through research and dialogue to support some fellow qualitative researchers. The big take away from this session was more needs to be done to support communities in their own language and culture.

After a morning full of learning and discussion, I met up with some awesome women. We were planning on attending the Wiki Women’s Lunch, but we ended up having a good chat right outside the room! I always meet the best people at wiki events.

The closing party was amazing for what I saw, as I only stayed for a small portion. I hear it was really incredible. The whole planning committee really went out of their way to make Wikimania 2018 a stellar event. I was so honored to be able to attend this Wikimania and be able to live such an experience. I hope I can meet all my new wiki friends again very soon.

Ostrich seen near Cape Point. Photo by me licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

The Big Takeaway

For those of you who are looking for my overall takeaway from this whole conference, it is listening. I am referring to the listening you do with your best self and from your soul. Listen because you want to hear that other person. Listen because you want to honor their experience. Listen because you want to understand what it is to be where they are.

If we are going to go anywhere in this world, it is together. We cannot put one before the other anymore. It is not an “eat or be eaten” world. It’s collaborative, for “two heads are better than one” really is true. To create something truly representative of the world, we need to work together. This may mean one person talks less in order to serve the goal of equity. In the same vein, it is cultural appropriation of the worst kind to take a piece of a community’s culture and write about it how it makes sense from an outsider’s perspective. No one can know everything, but don’t we want to have the closest truths out there for the knowledge seekers?

Reflections on Learning Days at Wikimania 2018

A couple weeks ago, I started an adventure I never imagined I would. I traveled to Cape Town, South Africa to attend Wikimania 2018.

The past year has been amazing, getting to travel the world for the sake of free knowledge (1, 2, 3, 4). For this trip, I applied for a scholarship early and thankfully, I received a scholarship. This scholarship was for conference attendance and room and board, which made the trip much more attainable.

I left St. Louis midday on a Monday, flying through Atlanta and Paris before arriving in Cape Town late Tuesday night. I was optimistic about my ability to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (awake and aware) Wednesday morning for the start of Learning Days, but I think I overestimated my abilities.

After a very important hunt for coffee, I arrived 15 minutes late for Learning Days (yikes! Apologies, friends!). Learning days is a pre-conference set for upcoming and emerging leaders in the Wikimedia movement. It gathers us together to learn best practices and collaborate on challenges in the communities. I can personally say I learned loads from the other attendees just during discussions and our conversations between sessions. This is my absolutely favorite part about attending conferences in the Wikimedia movement – the natural way in which you learn so much just by talking to people. For the content that really stuck with me from Learning Days, let’s just say I have pages and pages of notes! I’ll try to keep my summary to just a few things.

Bag I bought while in South Africa with the quote “If you educate a man, you educate an individual but if you educate a woman you educate a nation.” It says it’s an African proverb. Some of my friends from India said it’s from Gandhi. Whoever said it, I like them. 🙂

The first piece that is highly important that I think everyone should continually practice: listening. Listening can be powerful and listening can be dangerous. Let me explain. Through listening, one can learn, build empathy, connection, etc. Through listening, people can also be tricked.

You see, it is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.

-Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

Critical listening is, well, critical. Exercise your listening skills by doing the following:

Be present. Don’t think of other things or tinker on your phone while someone else is talking. Give them your attention and show that in your body language (eye contact, turn your body toward them, ignore your phone, etc.)
Don’t be quick to solution. We are creatures who like to solve problems, but maybe now isn’t the time, or the person just wants a sympathetic ear. Just listen.
Ask clarifying questions. Maybe you don’t know a detail or you want to make sure you’re fulling understanding, so ask. It’ll show you’re engaged and want to know more.

There are three types of listening:

Listening to win: listening to find information you can use to aid you in some way.

Listening to fix: listening to develop a solution to the issue at hand.

Listening to learn: listening to know more. This is the most engaging.

We learned about these different types of listening and how to recognize them in ourselves. We did this for the sake of community listening. To practice these we employed them during an exercise with a technique called Collective Problem Solving. We discussed community needs we had and assigned each need to a table. We then got to pick which table we joined. The tables were developed out of the needs we discussed, which included: community health, resources, volunteer retention, and cross-collaboration within the open movement.

During the Collective Problem Solving, we practiced the stages of good listening. First, we were listening to understand, and responding with clarifying questions. Then we asked deeper questions to get deeper understanding. Then we proposed solutions and worked collaboratively to understand the deeper problem and develop a solution. The solution to our table’s problem was so simple, but hugely impactful to the community health and could even reduce volunteer burnout, because the debates required over this topic would thus be reduced! Listening might just be the solution to world peace, or Wiki-peace, but for now, just start small and be a good listener.

We also talked about the differences among the scope of diversity, inclusion and equity. While the definitions above do not encompass the differences among these concepts culturally or linguistically, they do give us a starting point to help us recognize who is here and how they are involved. Diversity is equal participation and is about people. Inclusion is equal experience and about the process. Equity is equal outcomes and about the impact. These concepts were underlying themes during the whole of Wikimania. I’ll go into more detail later.

The next part that really stood out to me was storytelling for projects. This is something everyone needs to do because we want to have people engaged and caring about our projects. This framework tells you how to structure your story to make a good story that is impactful. Follow the ABCD framework:

Attention – get the attention of the audience
Because – tell them why it matters
Content – share the story
Do – call to action

Did you know the use of the word because increases engagement by more than 30%? Make your project stand out by telling the story and why it matters. You know your project, but others don’t. Practice storytelling for your next project and see what impact it has on engagement or acceptance. Even do it on a smaller level in daily communication and see how things change.

Photo of me presenting about survey strategies by Wikimedia Ghana User Group

During Learning Days, I presented about Surveys and how to properly design them to get the most out of them. Learning how to develop surveys is a highly important skill because when done correctly, it can give you the information you need. Note, I said information you need here instead of information you want. That is an issue I see with so many surveys and research studies. People have an idea of what they want to know beforehand and unwittingly ask leading or biased questions. This will not get the clean information and lead you into developing solutions for the community that they don’t really need! Check out my slides and the handout on Commons to get your survey is on the right track, and even to find out if a survey is the right tool for the job. Feel free to share and contact me if you would like some survey or methodological support for your project.

Oh, I hinted about bias in the paragraph above. I gave a lightning talk about bias. If you ever go to an event, go to the lightning talks. They’re always great because you can learn so much about the rest of the wiki community in such a short period of time.

The next thing we did during learning days that really stood out to me was the final activity on the second day. It stood out to me because I am an analytical thinker. Analytical thinkers are great at big picture thinking as well as seeing the complexities and nuance in a sea of grey. I cannot think of the name, but the activity was the one where there are two words placed on opposite sides of the room. You have to pick one, or a point in the middle. I dislike these activities because I generally think for the whole and not for myself. This is great because people like me help the NGOs of the world do amazing work, but it’s bad for activities like this because I cannot stop analyzing the situations in which one concept would be more important than the other, and visa versa. The world is less black and white but more grey, and often, ‘it depends’ is an appropriate response for this activity.

With that being said, I highly enjoyed Learning Days and hope to see it continue. I do hope, however, that some sort of cohort model can be developed so attendees can connect over a period of time before the actual Learning Days event and even after. I find the issue with in-person events is there is great momentum and excitement while we’re all together, but then we go back to our lives afterward without a clear plan to continue the enthusiasm.

Speaking of enthusiasm, you can clearly tell I am excited about this event because I have so much to say. The main event hasn’t even started at this point in my narrative, and this post is already pretty long, so I’m going to make it into two parts. Come back tomorrow for my reflections on Wikimania 2018. See you then.

I celebrated Wikipedia Day with Wikimedia NYC

On January 14, I celebrated Wikipedia’s birthday in New York City. Wikimedia NYC hosted a celebration for the day Wikipedia first went public – Wikipedia Day! There were loads of Wikipedia Day celebrations around the world. These celebrations happen each year around January 15. This just happened to be the first celebration I attended since I started editing Wikipedia.

Lots of amazing circumstances came together to make this trip possible. First, Sherry Antoine from AfroCROWD and I shared a room at the Wikimedia Diversity Conference. We talked about bias and her work with AfroCROWD connecting people with Wikipedia. She said Wikimedia NYC and AfroCROWD focus on showing people how they can use their natural interests on Wikipedia. What a great way to get them hooked! She suggested I come present in New York as part of Wikimedia NYC’s Wikipedia Day celebration. I told her I would love to come! About a month later, one of the Wikimedia NYC Board members, Ryan McGrady, emailed me. Wikimedia NYC was able to provide me with a travel scholarship and another Wikimedia NYC volunteer offered to host me.

After a quick airfare panic – the price went up from $270 to $306 overnight! – I booked my flight to New York City. I had never been before, so I was beyond excited. In Sweden, Sherry and I swapped stories about how we always wanted to go to each other’s homes. I had always wanted to go to her home of New York and she always wanted to visit mine of the Midwest. We each got a chuckle as our homes are just home to each of us. Now that I have gone to New York, I will certainly have to figure out a way to get Sherry to the Midwest!

I took an early flight on Saturday morning so I would have a little time to settle in and see the city before the event on Sunday. Due to the tunnel construction, instead of taking the subway, I ended up taking a taxi to the place where I was staying.

The Apple Store at 5th Avenue under construction

Taking a taxi was a little funny in itself. I flew into LaGuardia airport. It was really quiet, and the few people I saw went outside to board busses. I eventually found the taxi signs and eventually a yellow path painted on the ground. I started following the path. After a while of following the yellow path, I started to wonder how long this line gets at busy times. I finally arrived at the taxi stand and there were 3 attendants and 5 taxis sitting at numbered signs. One attendant told me to go to number 3. Another told me to get back in line. Another told me to go to number 4. The second attendant told me to get back in line. The attendant who waved me to number 4 waved me back over and yelled at the second attendant. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I did eventually take the taxi at number 4.

It was neat looking out the window on the way to Brooklyn. I saw pigeons huddled on a sunny rooftop. I observed a lot of graffiti on just about everything. I always find graffiti as an interesting art form.

Where I stayed was a beautiful neighborhood. My hosts told me the history of the neighborhood and how it all came to be. Turns out, my hosts are academics like me! They also have a large collection of books, so I felt right at home.

That evening, I went to dinner with a few fellow Wikipedians. We walked to Numero 28 Pizza. It was great. I learned all about choices of pizza, mozzarella, bakery items, fish, and produce. The New York City version of feeling people out involves asking where they get their pizza/mozzarella/other food item. In St. Louis, this is like the dreaded, “Where did you go to high school?” question.

The next morning we all headed to the Ace Hotel, where Wikipedia day was being held. I got to meet loads of new friends and reconnect with old friends. Lots of people were interested in implicit bias. It’s a good topic to talk about.

Jackie Koerner Presents on Implicit Bias at Wikipedia Day 2018, a work by King of Hearts [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons, *Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International*

The day was full of great presentations, panels, and lightning talks. My presentation went really well and I was glad to have the group engage with me. The Internet Society was wonderful and recorded and live-streamed the day’s events. If you couldn’t attend, the recording of my session and the slides are available on Commons.

Serious thanks and admiration to the organizers. The event went well. Your preparation and planning paid off! Also, the food was good and well-labeled. If you have food allergies, you know how amazing this is. The labels didn’t just have common allergens listed (like “contains peanuts and soy” but they had the actual ingredients listed! There were vegan and regular cake options. The cake was delicious! As illustrated by the picture, everyone else thought so too!

After the closing remarks, a few of us Wikipedians headed upstairs to the Breslin for a well-deserved drink. I always get a laugh at the drink names different bars have on their menus. Sometimes I think it’s a contest of who can make up the wildest drink name. An example from the Breslin’s drink menu: Captain Corto Swizzle.

During our chat, everyone gave great suggestions on what I should do the following day while touring the city. Ultimately, as I had my heart set on the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I decided that would be my main focus. I had orders from my kids to get Pokémon from the Nintendo store, so between the MET and the Nintendo store I planned to check out several of the traditional tourist stops: Central Park, Rockefeller Center, and the Apple Store being built on 5th Avenue.

I have leggings created from photos of Henry VIII’s armor. My leggings-and more importantly the education of others-wouldn’t be possible without the MET’s open policies about photos of their collections.

After we all decided it was time to turn in, I needed to know how to get back to my host family’s home. I really wanted to take the subway. The locals gave a chuckle, but to me, I don’t get to experience mass transit in my home city very much at all, so it was fun. On the train they pointed out all the sights to me, and they’re right: the city is very beautiful at night.

Amiibos in a case at the NYC Nintendo Store

Although I did not get nearly enough time in New York City, I am very grateful for this opportunity. I was able to meet new friends and reconnect with friends I met at Wikimania or earlier with my visiting scholar role. I cannot wait to see where my adventures takes me next!

My First Wikimania

By Kevin Payravi (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

A few weeks ago, I attended my first Wikimania conference. It was held in Montréal, Québec. I had been to Montréal once before for a conference, but I was in a part of the city just a few blocks to the south this time. Thank goodness this visit was much warmer. August is much nicer in Montréal than March!

I was not planning on attending the conference if I didn’t get a scholarship, as I don’t have travel reimbursement right now and I’m completely self-funded, but I was to be presenting in 3 different sessions. On top of this, I really wanted to meet the people I had been connecting with over the past year in person. I shed a tear for my credit card and booked the trip.

By Chris Koerner from St. Louis, USA (Wikimania Hackathon 2017) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Chris and Kari attended the conference with me. I am not sure if Kari was the youngest participant, but she did not see anyone else her age. I did meet a few 16 and 17 year-olds from Germany, but no other 11 year-olds. She did make the acquaintance of the oldest Wikimedian in attendance, who was charming.

Our flights to Montréal were fine, but certainly not my favorite. Both flights we took were really turbulent and on really small planes where we were seated in the back. Luckily they were short flights and thank goodness the hustle through Customs did not take as long this time. Last visit to Montréal we only made our flight from Toronto with 10 minutes to spare! Thankfully this time we had enough time to not be in a panic.

By Ziko (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Once we arrived in Montréal, we met up with one of Chris’ work friends at the baggage claim. We all took a taxi to the hotel. I don’t think I will ever be comfortable riding in a taxi or any other car service. Before this trip, I didn’t know you could drift in a Prius – just kidding. It really wasn’t that bad.

The hotel was really nice. The elevators were fast, if maybe a little too fast. The outlets all worked – if you travel a lot you know what a joy this is! And, although I was allergic to my bed, it was super comfy – nothing a little allergy medicine can’t fix! After a little rest and freshening up, we went to help with the set up for the Hackathon. I am always so blown away by what I see created at the Hackathons. I can’t think of any better coding than coding for a greater good.

That evening we met up with even more of Chris’ work friends and went out for dinner. After the first place turned out to be a dud (really, we judged a restaurant by it’s front door – more about this later), we went to a place called Dunn’s. Now eating out in other countries is a treat for me. I have food allergies. Countries outside of the United States usually have ingredients fully listed on the menus, or are really accommodating with modifying the item on the menu. Also, some food additives are just not allowed in other countries (get with the program, America). I rarely get sick eating out when I’m outside the US. Let’s just say I totally dug their in house veggie burger. Not quite like the one I had in Boston, where I hustled the chef for the recipe, but certainly in the top 5 of veggie burgers.

After a night’s rest and a quick breakfast, Kari and I headed to our selected pre-conference, WikiConference North America. The first day was full of tours, edit-a-thons, scan-a-thons, and wrapped up with a social night at a pub in Old Montréal. Kari was dragging her feet on the way to McGill University. She did not want to tour the rare collections and archives. I gave a little smirk and ignored her complaints. Little did she know what this meant: a library with exclusive content. Once we were inside, I didn’t see her again until it was time to leave. She enjoyed herself so much taking pictures to upload to Commons (still to come). After the whole day at McGill, she’s convinced that’s where she’s going to college. As for me, I met and talked with so many different archivists, librarians, scholars, and change-makers during our hour in the rare collection archive, I didn’t get a chance to look at the material in the rare collection!

Topics discussed included the strong work others are doing surrounding equality, information access, and gaps of all kinds. I met some librarians and archivists from around the world. Librarians are still the coolest people I know, and wicked smart. Always have at least one on your trivia team for trivia nights. They are the pioneers of getting knowledge into the hands of the people.

By Slowking4 (Own work) [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Wednesday evening we all gathered in Old Montréal at a pub for drinks, dinner, and conversation. I got to chat with several people who are passionate about the gender gap, bias, harassment, and categorization on Commons just like I am. It was really relaxing to get to talk amongst people with common concerns and thoughts. It can be great to have challenging discussions, but it is also so restorative to have those validating conversations. They show you you’re not alone, and what we’re all doing is important work.

One thing I can say I noticed right away about Wikimania and WikiConference North America, was the competitive aspect was missing. Most other conferences are filled with people recounting their resumes and competing for attention. But this experience with other people there for this common cause, it was very refreshing and quite relaxing. My lack of both rank and tenure didn’t matter here. My opinions about information access and the opportunity gap were received with snaps and nods of agreement. My choice to publish openly wasn’t followed by harsh comments, but excited anticipation. Wikipedians are the coolest people I know.

By Katie Chan (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

On Thursday I presented my session about implicit bias at WikiConference North America. There were really bright people in the room. Honestly, I am better for their comments and discussion. One person brought up the fact that my topic only covered English Wikipedia. That’s the tricky bit. My presentation did only cover English Wikipedia, but I would love to be able to examine bias in other languages. This is something I need help with from within the language community. Bias is additionally complicated since much of it has to do with culture. Since I have not experienced the culture, there would be a greater learning curve, and also a greater rate of error. I would, however, love to inform these projects and efforts in any way I can.

Because of my particular interest in harassment on Wikipedia, I was excited to hear about Pax’s work with harassment. Pax is championing and supporting efforts to make harassment easier to report, and getting the community to call harassment what it is. A lot of times harassment, both on- and off-wiki, is not called exactly what it is. Pax is putting their experience to work, and encounters triggering and challenging content each day, to make harassment something unacceptable in the wiki-community.

I met people working on gaps in content and contributors. I cannot express how much I learned. There are students in New York editing content about crime to counteract editing attempts by local police departments to improve the department image. Women in college are editing content and reaffirming their place in creating and curating knowledge. Students at the Ohio State University spoke about their user group on campus. I also spoke to a student from Germany who is part of the Wikipedia youth users group. She told me about empowering youth to code, take pictures for Commons, and otherwise contribute. I really hope we can get something like this started in communities where there is already a large Wikipedia user group.

By Samat (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Thursday night was the Wikimania opening session. It was nice to meet new people and get to embrace those I have come to know and love through Wikipedia. There was good food, and an amazing hoop dance to welcome us to Montréal.

On Friday, I presented my session on implicit bias for the Wikimania crowd. I was pretty surprised it was standing room only. I wish I would have recorded it and shared it. The group in the room was amazing. Answering questions and challenging each other to go further about bias was just great. There was one question about how you tell someone they’re wrong when they are telling you you’re biased, when you’re actually not. It was really cool seeing the crowd start to shift and buzz before this person finished asking their question. Thank you to the person in the crowd who answered the question, and with more grace than it deserved.

By VGrigas (WMF) (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The rest of Friday and Saturday were filled with more sessions, lunches and dinners, social gatherings, a delicious shawarma (from the restaurant we judged), and the closing party. I had an incredible time and will always look back on this fondly. All of the guest speakers were amazing. I’m serious. They were absolutely incredible. Everyone I met was doing brilliant work. I made connections with people who are working toward changing bias – bias in content, policy, thought. I am excited to continue our work together.