Friday, March 6, 2015 and Saturday, March 7, 2015

Writers, researchers, coders, students: have you ever gone to Wikipedia looking for information about women, trans, and/or gender non-conforming scientists, writers, scholars, filmmakers, artists, activists, politicians, and others, only to find the same gender marginalizations that occur in traditional Encyclopedias? Have you ever wondered what a feminist app or program might do or look like? Then join Ms. Magazine, the Fembot Collective, and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s first ever Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon + Hack-a-Thon!

On Friday, March 6th, we will be writing historical figures marginalized because of their gender into Wikipedia. Not only will we be contributing to the world of free knowledge and ensuring the existence of a gender inclusive history of everything, we will be training people how to make effective and engaging entries that will outlive the participation of their creators – ensuring the digital legacy of women, trans, and/or gender non-conforming people in multiple discipline, fields, and periods of history.

At our first Fembot Hack-a-thon, we created the Fembot Bot: an auto-tweeting bot designed to auto-reply to sexist and racist hashtags. Sadly, Twitter shut down the Fembot Bot too quickly. Join us in their memory on Saturday, March 7th, when we will collaborate with coders, software designers, and others at the Annenberg School to build some awe-inspiring feminist tools and interventions.

Send suggestions on who you’d like to see written into Wikipedia to admin@fembotcollective.org; look for registration information and other details on the Fembot website in early winter!