Celebrate Women/Suggested activities

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Before you get started in editing Wikipedia, we need you to create an account and we recommend learning how Wikipedia works.

After you have created your account, you can do one of the following:

Newcomer Activities Experienced Editor Activities

Newcomer activities

Are you new to editing Wikipedia? We recommend expanding an existing language Wikipedia in your language. The easiest way to participate is to add citations: citations are the building block for reliable content to stay on Wikipedia.

Improve an article with citations: Choose an article about a woman in need of citations, and help add references.; 20 minutes

Expand an article: Help make improvements to short women's biographies on Wikipedia.; 40 minutes

Add citations

Because anyone can edit Wikipedia, the Wikipedia community has developed a core strategy to ensure the quality of information in its articles: including footnotes to reliable sources to allow Wikipedia readers to "verify" the information. The simplest way to engage with Wikipedia is to work on existing citation needs, in your preferred language. You can find articles missing citations in English or 57 other languages.

Readers and editors who don't feel confident about a piece of information in an article can add a "citation needed" tag next to that statement. These tags are a form of public ask for help: members of the public asking for reliable research to back up the information they are reading.

Topics related to Women are likely to be missing citations, and get removed from Wikipedia if they don't have sources. Moreover, scientific works by women are not cited as frequently as men. Adding of a source written by a woman, makes that woman's work more visible.

Fill a needed citation

Are you passionate about a topic related to Women? Or do you know the work of a Woman scientist or author that could be cited on Wikipedia? Do you know of a famous female scientist that has not been written about and you wish to let the world know about her on Wikipedia?

You can add a reference to any Wikipedia article that lacks citation! Watch the resources below to learn how to add a citation on Wikipedia.

How to add a citation (Video)

Steps for adding a citation to a page about Women

Not sure where to start? That's okay, here are the steps where you can find pages that need citations:

Let the Citation Hunt tool recommend "citation needed" statements for you, or use the search menu at the bottom of the tool to choose a category (Wikipedia's version of a tag) of article that you have a special expertise in. Here are some links for different topics related to Women: Women scientists, Women writers, Women in Music, and Women's History.
Go to the article that you can fix the citation for, and find the statement
Click edit in the section header or at the top of the page
Find a reliable source (i.e. a published newspaper article, academic source, or book) that describes the fact missing a citation
Click on the Citation needed statement or the "Cite" Button at the top of the page
Pick the type of citation you want to use (either a Website, Newspaper, Book or Scholarly Journal) and fill out the form
Click the "Publish changes" button in the top right of the editing screen, and complete the editing dialogue.

Congratulations! You have add a citation to a Wikipedia page. Citations are the building blocks for representation of Women on Wikipedia!

Expand existing Wikipedia articles

As a new editor its important to learn how Wikipedia articles work, before trying to create a new one. The best way to learn, is to expand existing articles.

Expand the introduction to articles

The easiest thing to do is either expand the introduction of a Wikipedia article or to expand an existing section of a Wikipedia article. The introduction to Wikipedia articles is the main thing that readers read, and often doesn't reflect all of the recent changes. Still, it should be captivating enough for the reader to develop the desire to delve into the whole article, and not just stop at the first few lines.

Here is how to do that:

Explore the articles found in this search on English Wikipedia or read about a woman that you know about or from in your Country or Context.
Read the article, paying attention to what is mentioned in each section.
Return to the introduction section.
Click the edit button in the top right
Rewrite the introduction, making sure to summarize parts of the article that are missing in the introduction or remove content that doesn't help summarize the article
After updating the introduction section, click "Publish changes"

Add content to sections of existing articles

Some readers have identified gaps in existing articles, that could be expanded or improved. Most new editors start by filling these gaps. Here are instructions for expanding an article:

Explore the articles found in this search of English Wikipedia or by reading about women in your Country or Context.
Identify a section that you think could be expanded -- sections you might want to expand include short sections, sections with few references, or sections with banners suggestion changes
Search for reliable published sources, such as newspapers or academic articles about that topic
Summarize those sources as sentences with citations (see the instructions above for citations).
After you have added a few sentences, save. Most Wikipedia editors only add a few sentences at a time.
If you want to add more, click the edit button again and keep working!

Experienced Editor Activities

If you have some experience editing Wikipedia, you might want to learn how to create articles or translate content. Here are some guides to get started!

Create an article: Choose a person that you would like to create a new article about.; 60 minutes

Translate an article: Translate articles about women into your language.; 40 minutes