Wikipedia edit-a-thon satellite event

Danny Garside will be leading a Wikipedia edit-a-thon  satellite event on the afternoon of Tuesday 18th August, immediately after the main conference in the ACCA auditorium.

PURPOSE: In this workshop, we will improve Wikipedia’s coverage of colour perception and related topics. In its own words, “Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki." (Quoted from the Wikipedia article on Wikipedia).

MOTIVATION: Wikipedia is often the first port of call for anyone seeking information—including many academics. It is also a major source for search-engine summaries, large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude, and other artificial-intelligence projects. The information published on Wikipedia therefore reaches a far wider audience than its direct readership alone. As academics

engaged in the generation and dissemination of knowledge, we should make it a priority to ensure that the information widely shared through Wikipedia is accurate, comprehensive, and up to date. At present, however, this is not always the case. The Wikipedia Color Project has assessed the quality of colour-related articles using Wikipedia’s assessment grades and summarised its findings in a useful

table. Most of the articles assessed fall into the Stub, Start, and C classes, indicating that important content may be incomplete, unclear, or missing. I have also been compiling a list of colour-related topics that are not currently represented on Wikipedia at all. For example, there is no information on the MacLeod–Boynton colour space, the Helson–Judd effect, or the C(a)erulean Line. Those of us

who work regularly on any of these topics could readily create useful introductory articles about them or improve existing ones.

FORMAT: We will work together in the style of a small edit-a-thon—defined by Wikipedia as “an event where some editors of online communities such as Wikipedia […] edit and improve a specific topic or type of content.” Each participant will select either a missing topic or an existing Wikipedia article in need of improvement within their area of expertise. You may work independently or as part of a

group. As an experienced Wikipedia editor, I will help you navigate Wikipedia’s tools, formatting conventions, and editing guidelines.

JOIN: Please register using this link so that we can keep track of the contributions made during the event.