Wikipedia:Meetup/Online edit-a-thon on climate change - November 2020

We highly recommend a guide called How to contribute climate change information to Wikipedia which we (CDKN and FCFA) published in October 2020. It shares guidance and tips for new editors. Jump straight to Chapter 4: How to edit Wikipedia.

• Create a Wikipedia username (see Section 4.4 in our guide for important information).
• Make sure you understand the Wikipedia rules and styles before attempting to add any content (see Section 4.2 in our guide: "Five principles to guide Wikipedia editors").
• Adjust your preferences in Wikipedia so that you get e-mail notifications when someone writes on your talk page, or when a page that you have on your watchlist is being changed. Also adjust your preferences in Wikipedia so that both editors tabs are visible side by side, i.e. the "edit" and the "edit source" tabs. See here for more information: tips for novice Wikipedia editors. The purpose of watchlists is explained here.
• Read the list of do's and dont's for new or experienced editors: List of do's and dont's

If you are more of the "visual, moving pictures and audio" type learner, you might enjoy these tutorial videos which we have put together in our Youtube Playlist for you:

1. How to make your first edits in Wikipedia.
2. First steps in Wikipedia editing: talk pages, editing, watchlist, preferences, history...
3. How to insert references and images to Wikipedia articles.
4. How to copy a reference inside a Wikipedia article, how to adjust image size.
5. How and why to create a REDIRECT in Wikipedia.
6. Inserting references: page numbers, adding from ISBN number, copying references.

If you require more videos on specific topics, just e-mail us: wiki@southsouthnorth.org. There are also plenty more Wikipedia editing videos available on Youtube, just search for "Wikipedia tutorials", for example videos by The Wiki Show.

We also have further videos which are recordings from various Zoom training sessions we held for this edit-a-thon, see the Youtube Playlist by CDKN. Included in the Playlist are:

1. Launch Webinar of Wikipedia editing guide for climate change topics: How to contribute climate change information to Wikipedia (by EBclimate, Sadads and others) - 1:23 hours:minutes (presentation slides here)
2. Wiki4Climate opening session (by EBclimate, Mcnlisa and others) - 1:55 hours:minutes (presentation slides here)
3. Introduction to Wikipedia and editing basics (by Phoebe), a segment cut out of the opening session webinar - 30 minutes
4. How to get started with Wikipedia editing for this edit-a-thon (by EMsmile), a segment cut out of the opening session webinar - 7 minutes

1. Join our Wiki4Climate Slack Channel to interact with other participants and with experienced volunteers who are on hand to provide guidance. (update in June 2021: the Slack channel is still available but is a lot less active now compared to the time of the edit-a-thon in November 2021)
2. After joining the Slack channel please put your Wikipedia user name in brackets behind your profile name so that we know who is who in real life and in Wikipedia life.
3. Locate your own Wikipedia talk page. You can find it at the top right after logging in, it's the tab called "talk". A talk page might look like this. Talk pages are the Number 1 tool to communicate with other Wikipedians. Put your talk page on your watchlist by clicking on the star at the top right to make it a blue star.
4. React to the welcome message on your talk page by posting a little reply, thereby making your very first edit in Wikipedia! Make sure you sign your response with the four tildes which look like this: ~~~~. More details about talk pages are here. If your talk page is empty (no welcome message yet) then please tell us in the Zoom channel that you didn't receive your welcome message yet and we will rectify it.
5. Put your name next to one or several articles in the tables below to make a little commitment to yourself and others what you're going to work on this week. Note: this page can only be edited with the "source editor", not with the visual editor - don't be alarmed, just give it a go.
6. Write on the talk page of your article of interest to let others know what you intend on changing. More details about talk pages are here.
7. Optional: Write in the Slack channel “editing-comments-and-questions” what articles you plan to focus on, or tell us what you have already worked on and edited, as the week progresses. Interact with the others and enjoy meeting new people and working in this collaborative environment!

Once you have done these initial steps you can continue with:

• Choose more Wikipedia climate change articles that interest you and that requires improvement and check what information is already covered there.
• Decide what you want to add or change.
• Click "edit" (for the visual editor) and start editing. See Section 4.6: "How to make an edit"). Only make small changes at first and save your changes very frequently, including an edit summary, to give others a chance to review what you have done.
• Do not copy and paste chunks of text, but instead write sentences in your own words, with reference to back up what you are saying. Do not add content directly from publications or websites that are under copyright (see: Copyrights in Wikipedia). You need to paraphrase that content and cite the source.
• When writing, use language that is easy to understand for a layperson, especially for a person who does not have English as their first language.

CDKN and FCFA have been working closely with the WikiProject Climate Change to identify activities for the edit-a-thon. Many of the actions below are drawn from their suggestions for small to medium tasks for improving climate change content on Wikipedia. The table below outlines six actions to help improve Wikipedia articles. It might look a bit overwhelming, but you can easily select just one, two or more tasks that are suitable for your background by clicking on the sorting arrows at the top of the table.

If you want to know how a "perfect" Wikipedia article should look like, take a look at Wikipedia's featured articles. A featured article is the best quality article within Wikipedia. The Climate change article is a featured article (there is still room for improvement though!). See further examples here: Wikipedia:Featured articles.

A list of some of the climate change-related Wikipedia articles that require improvement are included in the tables below according to specific topic areas and gaps. Again this draws from WikiProject Climate Change’s guide on small to medium edits, and bigger tasks for more experienced editors here. This is not an exhaustive list of climate change articles given the cross-cutting nature of the topic. We suggest that you do some research to find any other specific articles that may also interest you and that require improvement. The list has been provided to make it easier to know some key gaps and what articles already exist on climate change. It does not mean, however, that the other Wikipedia articles are "out of bounds".

We have grouped the articles by the following themes in the tables below:

1. Country and climate articles
2. "Climate change in Country X or Region X" articles
3. Adaptation and impacts articles
4. Climate change and society articles
5. Agriculture, food and water articles (with a connection to climate change impacts)
6. Climate finance articles
7. Mitigation and energy articles

A lot more people read the articles about specific countries than the general articles about climate change. By adding more contextually relevant information to those articles, you can help connect climate change, which can be an abstract concept, with people’s sense of place. This is a useful activity to get started with editing. Here is an example: The article Climate change in Pakistan starts with "Climate change is expected to cause wide reaching effects on Pakistan." and yet the country article on Pakistan doesn't mention climate change even once. Let's change that!

Good examples where climate change is already included are the articles for Senegal, Ghana and Suriname (but each of those, the information on climate change is integrated in a slightly different way).

The country articles are meant to follow a certain template which is explained here. The template so far does not have an explicit section on climate but it comes under "geography". This is something we could discuss further with WikiProjects Countries here.

To help you, we have included a table of some country articles where there are a large number of people from these places attending the edit-a-thon. In most cases you would only have to added 1-3 sentences about climate change in that particular country and then link to the relevant sub-article if it already exists (like Climate change in Pakistan).

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Note 1: Compare with Climate of Africa which already has a section on "climate change" (being an excerpt of Climate change in Africa) whereas Climate of Asia does not yet have a section on "climate change".

Many articles on how climate change will affect different regions and countries need expansion, and many rated as “start” articles that need development. Working to expand the articles listed in Climate Change by Country or Region is a valuable task. Click into that category to find articles for a particular country that interests you. For example the article about Abuja does not mention climate change at all. Yet a quick google search shows it is one of the most vulnerable growing cities in Africa (see World Economic Forum). The Abuja article should summarise the effects of climate change in the city and connect with a new article about climate change in Nigeria.

The WikiProject Climate Change has outlined some useful steps to contribute to these articles. Read more about these here.

Steps for contributing:

• Find your local community’s Wikipedia article. You can search for the name of your city, county, state or province, or country.
• Expand the articles with key topics or concepts in scholarship that aren’t already covered yet in the article. Consider following the suggested article structure documented here.
• Look for out-of-date information (anything older than 3-4 years) and see if you can find a new source that allows you to update it.
• Search within the article for the concept of “Climate Change” or “Global Warming” (use the Control+F keys).
• If there is no mention, go to the “climate”, “geography” or "environment" section of the article.
• In a separate tab, search Google or Google news, and search for articles describing the impact of climate change in your specific area.
• Read the piece about how your local community will be affected by climate change, and add a summary to the article
• Make sure to cite the source by clicking “Cite” in the visual editor, and generating a citation.
• Write an edit summary saying what you did (i.e. “added climate change to article”)
• Click Publish!

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Help address the major gaps in terms of adaptation to climate change. Many participants have also expressed an interest in working on adaptation as well as impacts-related topics. The table below includes some of the main articles in this category. You can also find climate adaptation topics here.

Some previous work to inspire you: At the Africa climate change edit-a-thon, volunteers added a new section to the Climate change adaptation article on adaptation in Africa (with sub-sections on northern, western, eastern and southern Africa); and a new section was also created on adaptation policy, which was populated with examples from across the African continent. Africa-relevant sources were also added to the external links section, which previously only included geographically-specific pointers to North American and European examples.
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Note 1: This is a high impact article and should only be tackled by experienced editors. What needs doing:

• More developing country examples - for example in the section of impacts on people an African photo and caption is needed
• The mitigation section is also so much longer than adaptation - despite there being separate articles for both topics (mitigation and adaptation sections should be evenly weighted).
• Look for ways to improve readability.

Understanding the societal aspects of climate change is critical for understanding and effectively responding to the climate crisis. This includes how climate change impacts disproportionately affects different social groups and genders, the interactions between climate change and poverty, and the ethical and political dimensions of climate change. This group of articles needs further expansion and more examples and sources from the Global South.

You can highlight gender and social inclusion issues in the various climate change topics (for example, by sector, industry or geography), specifically how climate change will disproportionately affect different groups and the role of women - their needs, concerns and leadership in climate action. If this topic interests you might consider editing articles identified by the Climate Justice Task Force.

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Climate change is set to dramatically alter our agriculture and food systems and water availability. Many agriculture, food and water-related articles do not adequately cover climate change issues.

We recommend expanding the articles about agriculture through several ways:

• Improving the lead section of agricultural articles to include mention of climate change impacts with citations on that kind of agricultural topic
• Expanding key topics related to climate change in the article, i.e. impacts on land-use practices, water scarcity, expected extreme weather impacts, etc.
• When it's a general topic, add examples of global south content where possible.

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Climate finance is another gap and below are some articles that need further development.
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The outputs were analyzed with event metrics and with the event's Dashboard. The two tools give slightly different results for some of the parameters. In general, the dashboard gives higher numbers for "articles edited" and "article views".

Three users were removed from the analysis because they are long-term active Wikipedians and also edited many articles that were not related to climate change: Sadads, Stanjourdan, Phoebe. Removing these three persons meant that the figures for "articles edited" and "article views" dropped a bit. It is wonderful to have active, long-term editors participate in edit-a-thons. The only small problem with very active editors is related to the statistical analysis: during the week of an edit-a-thon they usually work on a variety of topics, not just climate change ones but it is not easily possible to only include their climate change related edits in the analysis.

The outputs were analyzed with event metrics by creating this event and logging English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Settings:

• Time period used in the analysis: 19 November to 4 December 2020
• Wikis analysed: English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons

Contributions:

• Pages created: 29 (actual value: 5, see explanation below)
• Pages improved: 286 (actual value: 229, see explanation below)
• Edits made: 2.3k
• Uploaded files: 34
• Bytes changed: 582 K

Impact:

• Views to pages created: 1 K
• Average daily views to pages improved: 352.8 K
• Average daily views to uploaded files: 13.9 K
• Unique pages with uploaded files: 30
• Uploaded files in use:30

Participation:

• Participants: 118
• New editors: 72
• Retention after 7 days (beginning 7 days after the event): 2

The event's Dashboard was useful during the event to have an overview of who is editing and how much. The dashboard's data for this event is provided here for the time period 19 November to 4 December 2020 for the English Wikipedia (data from 16 December 2020):

• Articles created: 23 (actual value: 5, see explanation below)
• Articles edited: 270 (actual value: 229, see explanation below)
• Edits, in total: 6.86 K
• Registered editors: 118
• Words added: 119 K
• References added: 923
• Article views: 6.91 M (the way the Dashboard seems to work is that this figure will continue to rise over time; the value here is for 16 December 2020)
• Wikimedia Commons uploads: 35

• What I learnt from Wiki4Climate online edit-a-thon - My reflections on the experiences gathered at the Wiki4Climate online edit-a-thon. By Sumana Banerjee, India, User:GoluBanner11
• Wiki4Climate - Improving the global knowledge on climate change through Wikipedia - Blog post on website of FCFA on 8 December 2020

We did not focus on creating new articles during this event but rather on improving existing articles. Nevertheless, five articles were created during the event. The analytical tools gave a higher number of 29 because some participants also created articles that were not relevant for our topic (e.g. on African athletes). Also the software did not pick up those articles that only existed as a redirect to another page. The following five articles were created:

1. Climate change and cities
2. Climate change in Kenya (was a redirect page before the edit-a-thon)
3. Climate change in Nigeria
4. Climate change in Tanzania (was a redirect page before the edit-a-thon)
5. High Council on Climate

The ten volunteers who have made the most valuable contributions to climate change related topics in the English Wikipedia during the edit-a-thon are listed below. The prize winners were announced by Dr. Musonda Xoliswa Mumba (United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Nairobi) in a video call on 1 December 2020 (recording available here on Youtube: https://youtu.be/3ShOFQ0d2m8). Amongst the prize winners were six women, and all winners were from the Global South:

1. Muhammed, User:Gbadegesin Muhammed - Nigeria (male); had previously also won a prize in the Wiki loves SDGs edit-a-thon
2. Adolphus, User:Dolphyb- Nigera (male)
3. Karina, User:Hsomak - Colombia (female)
4. Sirine, User:Sirine.M96 - Lebanon (female)
5. Precious, User:Obiorah_Precious_Oby - Nigeria (female); had previously also won a prize in the Wiki loves SDGs edit-a-thon
6. Karyna, User:Kerri1992 - Lebanon (female)
7. Rozai, User:Schezwan - India (male)
8. Fatima, User:Tima93Lb - Lebanon (female); had previously also won a prize in the Wiki loves SDGs edit-a-thon, under the name of User:Fatima993
9. Vidur, User:VM98 - India (male)
10. Juliana, User:555Grace - Uganda (female)

We had 121 participants signed up in the event's Dashboard (compared to 278 people who had responded to the call for participation and added their names to an e-mail list). About 68 volunteers out of these 121 people (56%) contributed to climate change related topics in the English Wikipedia during the edit-a-thon - some with a lot of edits, some with only two or three edits. Volunteers who made at least ten good edits in the English Wikipedia during the edit-a-thon received a certificate of participation (24 volunteers requested a certificate, and 22 were rewarded one).

It is estimated that about 51% of these 68 active editors were female, and 72% were from developing countries (Global South), as per the table below (our target had been 50% female and 75% from Global South). Note that participants did not have to reveal their gender or location which means that for about 20% of participants we did not know these parameters. We also determined that 75% of the 68 active editors were new to Wikipedia editing.

The list below shows participants who made edits during this edit-a-thon, in alphabetical order:

The Eventmetrics tools provided a list of 286 articles that were improved during the event by participants. Of those, 57 articles were removed manually because their topics were not relevant to climate change. For example, two editors did some parallel work on biographies of Nigerian athletes or politicians from a range of countries. Another editor changed wikilinks to "biomass" in several articles on various animals. Those articles were removed from the analysis.This left 229 articles that were improved during the event, and these are shown in the table below.

We had proposed 82 articles to be edited (our proposed list is shown further down below). 90% of our proposed 82 articles were indeed edited during this event which is a good result.

• Date and time: Starting on 24 November 11:00 (GMT) until 1 December 2020 12:30 (GMT).
• Location: Online.
• Sign up here

The event will include the following:

• Opening Zoom session on 24th November from 11:00-12.30 GMT to welcome and orientate participants, share why CDKN and FCFA are hosting the event, and offer some essential editing basics to get everyone started.
• Daily check-ins and coffee chats (via Zoom) with fellow volunteers and experienced Wikipedia editors to get advice, give updates and share experiences, held from 11:00- 13:00 GMT on 25th, 26th, 27th and 30th November.
• Virtual workroom (online platform) moderated by a Wikipedia expert to answer any questions that may arise as you are editing. The online platform we will be using is Slack and you can join here.
• Closing Zoom session on 1st December from 11:00-12.30 GMT to close the edit-a-thon, reflect on progress, announce prize winners, and discuss how to keep in touch and contribute beyond this edit-a-thon.

• Step 1: Register your interest in the event here. From here we will email you reminders and next steps for the event.
• Step 2: Create your Wikipedia account here or log into Wikipedia if you already have an account. If you have a problem with a blocked IP address, please email us at: wiki@southsouthnorth.org
• Step 3: While logged in to Wikipedia, register here on our Wiki4Climate Dashboard for the event. This gives us an overview of all edits made during this edit-a-thon.
• Step 4: Join our Slack Channel using this link. We will use the Slack Channel to coordinate activities, collaborate with others, and answer you questions. If you have problems with using Slack, email us at: wiki@southsouthnorth.org.
• Step 5 (recommended for best results): Attend the opening webinar on 24 November and daily check-ins and coffee chats during 24 November to 1 December if you have time (times and links will be announced on the Slack Channel).

We recognise the importance of contributing climate change information to the different language Wikipedia’s and encourage participants of Wiki4Climate to do so.

However, at this time we only have the capacity to provide instructional guidance and evaluate edits in English. Hence prizes (see below) will only be awarded to participants who edit English Wikipedia and all the Zoom sessions will also be held in English. Should a group of editors wish to edit in the same language (other than English) we encourage you to work together and assist each other on Slack.

• Main coordinators: CDKN and FCFA.
• Meet the team: The main team members involved are User:EMsmile, User:EBclimate, User:BethMackay, User:Mcnlisa, and User:TiffChalm100. More information about the team is available in the Wiki4Climate starter pack.
• Contact details: wiki@southsouthnorth.org

This event follows on from the Africa Climate Change edit-a-thon (view this dashboard for more about that event's impact).

We will provide certificates for participants who make at least 10 good edits to the English Wikipedia on climate change topics over the course of the week. A "good edit" is one that does not need to be reverted.

Furthermore, a total of 10 participants will receive a prize of USD 50 in vouchers (exchanged in local currency where applicable).

The 10 prizes will be allocated as follows:

• At least six of the ten prizes will be awarded to female participants, and at least six will be awarded to participants from the Global South.
• We will look favourably towards the "most improved” climate change editors and are planning to give at least three prizes to people who new to Wikipedia editing (i.e. people who have started Wikipedia editing only this year or even only on 24 November 2020!).

The most valuable contributions will be judged by a combination of the following criteria:

• The quality of the edit, including depth of information added
• The quantity of the edits
• Providing information related to the Global South
• Bonus points will be given for editors who have added content relating to gender and social inclusion concerns, i.e. climate justice, where it is appreciated that people are affected differently by the impacts of weather and climate change, and benefit differently and have different contributions to make in terms of climate solutions

The prize winners will be selected by the end of Monday 30th November and announced at the end of the edit-a-thon where they will be asked to participate in the closing Zoom session. The organisers will determine the winners and to make this judgement, they will carefully review the volunteers' contributions as per the data collected in the event's dashboard. The judgement decision is final and cannot be disputed.

You can only be eligible for the prize if you are editing while logged into Wikipedia, if you are editing English Wikipedia, and if you have registered for the event's dashboard - see above under registration. This means anonymous edits cannot be counted and neither can edits be counted of someone who did not register for the dashboard. Double check that you are registered by taking a look at the list of editors here.

You can see who else has registered for this event by clicking on the Dashboard here.

We are encouraging participants from the climate change community (practitioners, communicators and researchers) to use this opportunity to start editing Wikipedia and contribute research to key climate change pages.

We particularly encourage participants from the Global South and women to participate as editors in this event. We want to help reduce the major gaps on Wikipedia, such as the Gender Gap, and encourage voices from less-represented groups to be more heard in the global knowledge commons.

We encourage anyone from the Wikimedia Community to participate in this event, in particular members of the WikiProject Climate change and Wikimedians for Sustainable Development group.

You can also help with advertising the event on social media (see hashtags and example tweets below)

• Hashtags: Primary hashtag: #Wiki4Climate Secondary hashtags you can use: #Wikipedia #ClimateChange #GetInvolved #Volunteer #SignUp. Please help us promote this project on twitter or other social media.
• Shortened URL to this page: bit.ly/35i07jk
• Possible tweets to advertise this event:
  • This week, I am working with volunteers from around the world in an exciting online edit-a-thon where we'll edit @Wikipedia articles on climate change. Join us, #volunteer & be a part of an exciting opportunity! #Wiki4Climate
  • #DidYouKnow that a large majority of climate change articles on @Wikipedia lack content & examples from the Global South? Join me any time from 24 Nov - 1 Dec for our online edit-a-thon and help us to change this! #Wiki4Climate
  • Are you a #ClimateChange professional from the Global South? Join me any time from 24Nov - 1Dec to tackle #Wikipedia’s lack of Global South contributors #Wiki4Climate
  • Do you have #climatechange content to share, but have never considered using @Wikipedia as an outreach channel? Register now for the #Wiki4Climate edit-a-thon